Meg Cabot

This mother-daughter story embraces the highs and lows of growing up without growing out of what makes us unique. It's an inspirational song that encourages readers to find their own special voices to sing along with Black Canary. Kirkus writes, ''reinforce(s) the girl-power aesthetic. . .''

Ignite

Black Canary

Shareca

DC has a brand-new release for the younger audience, the vigilante this time is Black Canary in Black Canary: Ignite. This novel introduces the wonderful and powerful Dinah Lance. As we are in Gotham City once again, we follow an adorably inventive coming-of-age story about how Dinah came to be Black Canary. The story is by Meg Cabot, the illustrations are by Cara McGee. It is colored by Caitlin Quirk and lettered by Clayton Cowles. 

Dinah wants to win the battle of the bands and join the Gotham City Junior Police Academy. She wants to continue being friends with her two best pals and solve crimes like her dad. That's it. Sounds simple, right? Wrong. When a mysterious figure keeps threatening Dinah, her friends, family, and her goals, she only has one option: To learn more about herself, her mother, and the various struggles of adolescent life. 

Ignite is a story that requires the use of prose because Dinah is so young in this re-telling of her childhood. What I loved about this novel is that Dinah's voice was compelling. You could hear it just as Dinah would talk in this thirteen-year-old phase. It mirrors a lot of what Dinah does now in the DC Universe and I loved that homage. It showcases the band aspect and how in nearly every run Dinah is in a band or playing music because of her beautiful voice. 

Towards the end, it felt rushed; I didn't quite feel like it was fleshed out enough. The beginning of the novel had a very nice flow to it. Since the voice is already prose and written in a childlike format, this might be an aspect that doesn't appeal to adults reading it. I did enjoy the beginning of the novel, I thought towards the end it started to lose its focus. Nonetheless, I would use this simplistic plot as something that can open a lot of conversations with the age-group. Numerous things do happen in this story.

The illustrations are something that is subjective to the reader. As I stated before in the narrative, this is a younger-audience novel, the illustrations reflect that. Throughout Ignite, the artwork is going to be lighter in tone as well as coloring and lettering. With that being said, it works for this story. While, I, an adult for all intents and purposes, it didn't work for me; I believe it would work for the intended demographic one-hundred-percent. I did enjoy how wholesome it was drawn and colored.

Solange Bello

I was given an ARC of this via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.  


Black Canary : Ignite was another fun light read for this year. 

The story follows 13 year old Dinah Lance in middle school so fully expect this to be 
a childish like read. I loved the art style in this its very vibrant and will definitely catch the eye of middle grade readers. As an adult I obviously didn't enjoy it as much as a child would, I would still rate this a 3.5 mainly because its very -stereotypical middle school- meaning as I was reading it I kept thinking yeah middle school was not that cool. 

The characters are pretty well placed and well done - Dinah's friends, her parents, and the side characters plus the villain. 

I would like to see a crossover comic where they address the whole 'joker escaping' comments in the future I think that would be pretty cool to see it tying in to the other comics. 

I would recommend this to kid readers - or any adults trying to get their kids into comics. 

3.5 / 5 stars

Black Canary Ignite

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