Imogene has been home-schooled her entire life and has also spent eight weeks every year with her family at the Renaissance Faire in her Florida community. Now she’s finally getting the chance to play a part in the Faire as a squire to her dad’s villainous knight. Imogene is also starting public school—her own choice—for the first time. Imogene’s trials and tribulations as she navigates middle school are framed in terms of a Medieval drama at the start of every chapter of this graphic novel. (“Our heroine’s journey through the halls of middle school winds through unknown lands and uncharted territories.”) The false face and slings and arrows of one popular girl in particular are a challenge, but not as painful as discovering she, herself, is not above treachery as she tries to position herself in the social strata. Her behavior isn’t very noble at home, either. Luckily her family is marvelously grounded, not to mention wonderfully realistic. Life isn’t all Faires and fun, after all: Her dad sells pools and spas as his day job while everyone pitches in at home, whether helping make crafts for the shop her mom runs at the Faire, or watching her little brother. Imogene’s dad is brown-skinned, her mom white, in this entertaining and highly relatable quest in which Imogene emerges the hero of her own story—what every kid can be. (Ages 8-12)

Calling all Raina Telgemeier fans! The Newbery Honor-winning author of Roller Girl is back with a heartwarming graphic novel about starting middle school, surviving your embarrassing family, and the Renaissance Faire.

Eleven-year-old Imogene (Impy) has grown up with two parents working at the Renaissance Faire, and she's eager to begin her own training as a squire. First, though, she'll need to prove her bravery. Luckily Impy has just the quest in mind—she'll go to public school after a life of being homeschooled! But it's not easy to act like a noble knight-in-training in middle school. Impy falls in with a group of girls who seem really nice (until they don't) and starts to be embarrassed of her thrift shop apparel, her family's unusual lifestyle, and their small, messy apartment. Impy has always thought of herself as a heroic knight, but when she does something really mean in order to fit in, she begins to wonder whether she might be more of a dragon after all. 

As she did in Roller Girl, Victoria Jamieson perfectly—and authentically—captures the bittersweetness of middle school life with humor, warmth, and understanding.