School for Extraterrestrial Girls Vol 2: Girls Take Flight - Coming Soon
From PaperCutz
I enjoyed the first book and am happy to provide details of School for Extraterrestrial Girls Vol 2: Girls Take Flight coming in November 2023 from Papercutz.
School for Extraterrestrial Girls Vol 2: Girls Take Flight
by Jeremy Whitley1 (writer) and Jamie Noguchi2 (Artist)
Tara Smith’s parents are super strict with all their rules and routines, and Tara is a dutiful daughter. Rule #1: No friends her own age. Rule #2: keep her bracelet on, or else. But when she breaks her routine—and then loses her bracelet—she’s in trouble.
Now outed as an extraterrestrial after wielding fire and losing her humanoid form, Tara is captured by the government. She’s given two options: get shipped far away where she won’t be a danger to anyone or stay on Earth and join a school for other extraterrestrial girls like her. Things at the school aren’t easy—especially for the girl whose only friends were textbooks. But Tara’s goal to learn how to control her powers is soon sidelined by the discovery that the people she’s called Mom and Dad all these years aren’t her parents.
In School for Extraterrestrial Girls Vol 2: Girls Take Flight (Ages 7-12) the students of the School for Extraterrestrial Girls have met their match when they collide with the School For Extraterrestrial Boys!
The extraterrestrial girls are back! With their former school compromised, exposing Tara, Misako, Summer, and Kat, to possible danger from unknown alien forces, they all must relocate to a new hidden school--The School for Extraterrestrial Boys! Located on a hidden island in the arctic north, the new campus has a mysteriously warm summer climate, a beautiful lake, and dozens of sinister mysteries! The girls are staying in what appears to be summer cabins on the lake while going to school in the mysterious castle where the boys stay. This is all under the watchful eye of the boys' headmaster, Headmaster Stokes—an arrogant man with an unknown agenda and an obsession with Tara's people. They may still be in school, but this will be a semester full of blossoming romances, learning to love themselves, and trying to survive the mysteries of both this terrifying island and boys! Romance, magic, and near-death experiences are all part of a regular school day at the School for Extraterrestrial Girls.
Writer Jamie Whitley weighed in on the second book in the series:
“School for Extraterrestrial Girls, for us, was an opportunity to play in this fun space of BIG sci-fi (aliens, different worlds, different species) and at the same time ground it in very real feelings of coming of age. Tara is a kid who's had her whole life set out for her by her parents and has done what they said without question. She's bookish, studious, and ambitious. However, when she spontaneously combusts in the middle of class one day, her whole world is turned upside down as she learns that her parents aren't really her parents and they've been hiding from her the fact that she's actually an alien her whole life. She's given the choice of being sent back to her people's homeworld or learning how to be "a good earthling" at the School for Extraterrestrial Girls. For Tara, that isn't even really a choice. She's lived her whole life on Earth and has no idea what would await her on her home planet, so she has to join the school.
Obviously, in a lot of ways this is not so different from choices that real kids face about their lives all the time, it's just on a way way bigger scale. She also begins developing these relationships with her classmates that are strained by who they are and where they come from, but all the more intense because of where and how they're forming them. Not unlike normal high school, they're incredibly different people pushed into this high pressure situation and trying to make relationships with others while they're still figuring out who they are. Added with Jamie's fun, colorful, Tokusatsu (“Tokusastu" is a Japanese term for a live action show or film that uses practical special effects. Godzilla, Power Rangers, Ultraman, and Kamen Rider are all examples of tokusatsu that influenced Book 2) influenced art, I think it's a fun and light read that will really stick with the people who need it.
This series is really important to us, because we get to do the best of both worlds. We get to have the high drama of high school right alongside the giant aliens and monsters. And that, I think, captures the feeling of what it's like to be in high school better than the real thing. At some point in their time in high school, everybody feels like an alien."
More info on School for Extraterrestrial Girls Vol 2: Girls Take Flight
Authors: Jeremy Whitley (writer) and Jamie Noguchi (Artist)
Format: 6x9 inches
Page Count: 132 pages
Hardcover Price: $19.99
Paperback Price: $12.99
ISBN for Paperback: 9781545806968
ISBN for Hardcover: 9781545806951
Age Range: 7-12
On-sale Date: November 28, 2023
Sale links:
● Amazon
● Bookshop
JEREMY WHITLEY is best-known for his Middle Grade series PRINCELESS published through ActionLab, which was twice nominated for Eisner awards and a three time Glyph award winner. He also has had successful runs on "My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic," "Courage the Cowardly Dog," and Marvel's "The Unstoppable Wasp."
JAMIE NOGUCHI is an illustrator from the DC metro area. He has had a successful career as colorist for UDON, Marvel, Dark Horse, and Image. He provided the art for Erfworld, which landed on Time Magazine's Top 10 Graphic Novels of 2007.