Crumble (A Graphic Novel)

December 1, 2024

Gr 3-6-At the Om Nom Bakery, Emily and her aunt Gina bake sweet treats infused with empowering emotions like confidence, contentment, and relief. There is only one rule with this magical skill set: do not bake with bad feelings as the resulting confections will make people sick. All is going fine until Gina dies suddenly in a car accident and Emily's life is turned upside down. Baking is the only way Emily can cope with her grief and what results is a crumble that her friends and classmates find mysteriously irresistible, much to their detriment. Will Emily be able to reclaim her baking magic in a world without her aunt? McClaren builds dimensional characters and an ideally paced narrative that gives readers plenty of time to experience Emily's feelings-good and bad-alongside her. Bell's kawaii-informed style creates a cozy world that fans of Kristen Gudsnuk's Making Friends, Reimena Yee's S�ance Tea Party, and Suzanne Walker's Mooncakes will eat up. VERDICT The levity of this magical story deftly balances the gravity of its subject matter and will leave readers wanting another bite. A recommended purchase for middle grade graphic novel collections.-Sarah Simpson

Copyright 2024 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

November 4, 2024
At Om Nom, a magical family-owned bakery, tween Emily and her aunt Gina, who read as white, bake emotions like confidence and relief into steamed cheesecakes and lightly sugared cookies. Emily’s mother travels globally as a magic baking lecturer, leaving Aunt Gina to ensure that Emily—along with her Korean-cued best friend Dae—gets to school on time. When Aunt Gina suddenly dies, grief deflates everything. Bell (The Leak) mirrors the emptiness Emily and her mom experience following Aunt Gina’s death by utilizing wordless panels and negative space to depict the void left behind in their once-affectionate home. If a baker is having “bad feelings,” then baking is off-limits, squashing Emily’s only outlet; nothing else she tries seems to help, even with Dae’s steadfast efforts to cheer her up. After an argument with Dae, followed by a disastrous school bake sale, Emily must reckon with her coping mechanisms—with Mom’s help. This thoughtful graphic novel by McClaren (the Hinges series) affirms that while life changes after loss, it can still be sweet. Recipes for the girls’ bakes are included throughout, depicted as annotated pages of Emily’s spiral-bound cookbook. Ages 8–12.

Starred review from December 1, 2024
A young girl learns to wield dessert-based magic while coping with loss. Emily's mom travels the world, giving talks about magic baking, but Emily is happy with their monthly family dinners and her cozy life with her aunt Gina, who runs a bakery where they sell baked goods magically imbued with good feelings. With support from her best friend, Dae, Emily practices her own magical baking skills and shares the results with her classmates (and the recipes with readers). Suddenly, Emily's life changes forever when her aunt dies in a car accident. Emily soon learns why it's not a good idea to magically bake bad feelings when she inadvertently makes all her classmates sick. Through Bell's cute, expressive, contemporary artwork and McClaren's uncomplicated yet profound writing, the story teaches a lesson about healthy grieving with subtlety and care and without platitudes. The characterization is deeply human, particularly of Emily's mom, who is trying her best to be a good parent while grieving, even as she unintentionally upends Emily's life. In the end, Emily begins to accept instead of sublimate her grief and the permanent change in her life. Emily and her family are light-skinned, while best friend Dae is Korean American as well as gender-nonconforming. Deliciously cute, funny, and touching.(Graphic fiction. 7-11)

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January 1, 2025
Grades 3-7 Emily and her family have a unique magical ability: they can bake emotions into their desserts. Emily and her best friend, Dae, love to go to her family bakery to practice making desserts from scratch. However, Emily's life takes a tragic turn when her beloved aunt Gina suddenly dies in a car accident. To cope with her emotions, she bakes a crumble, breaking her rule of never baking with negative feelings. The dessert, a reflection of her sorrow, is unappetizing, but somehow no one can stop eating it, and though it does nothing to ease her pain, Emily keeps baking it. McClaren handily navigates the theme of loss with care and respect, cleverly using emotionally infused desserts as a medium to delve into the complex world of feelings. The weighty issues of loss and grief are nicely balanced with the lighter elements of baking, humor, and friendship, which especially comes through in Bell's bright, softly rounded, and cartoonish artwork. An ideal read-alike for The Happy Shop or Pilu of the Woods, this emotionally intelligent story offers an engaging narrative with useful SEL tools.

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