Though Maia Kobabe is each probably the most banned creator in America, and the Comics Trade’s Co-Individual of the yr, e have additionally discovered time to work on a brand new graphic novel about exploring gender.
In line with Publishers Weekly, Saachi’s Tales shall be revealed in Spring 2025 by Scholastic’s Graphix imprint. Kobabe will write and artist Fortunate Srikumar will co-write the guide, which is described as a coming of age middle-grade graphic novel about “aspiring creator Saachi, who struggles to navigate altering social dynamics and her evolving identification, as her pals begin coupling up and everyone else appears to suit neatly right into a boy/woman binary.”
Srikumar’s work will be discovered on Patreon and Instagram.
The guide was acquired in a six determine public sale by editor David Levithan and agented by Emily Mitchell at Wernick & Pratt, and e ‘grammed in regards to the information.
“The whirlwind continues: I offered my second guide, SAACHI’S STORIES, due out from @graphixbooks in 2025! I co-wrote this guide with my fantastic, sensible, scorching, humorous, gifted good friend Fortunate Srikumar. You’ll find them on instagram @diamoric.comix and @luckswats. We’ve each been engaged on this guide since mid 2020, and I’m so excited to lastly let you know about it, and share it with the world in a pair years! This guide is fiction, and it’s aimed toward a youthful viewers than Gender Queer however it’s as soon as once more a few character wrestling with gender, identification, and sexuality, this time within the crucible of junior excessive. I’ll in all probability publish updates and progress studies on my patreon over the course of the subsequent yr– our ultimate artwork deadline is January 2024! Thanks for all of the help, and I hope you’re keen on this new guide when it comes out. ✍️✨”
Kobabe is finest recognized, after all, for Gender Queer, eir first graphic novel, revealed by Oni/Lion Forge, an autobiographical story of Kobabe’s personal gender journey to being non-binary. (Kobabe makes use of e/em/eir pronouns.) Over the previous couple of years the guide has turn into each an inspirational guide for folks trying to perceive their gender, and a lightning rod for controversy, being faraway from cabinets at school lubraries and, more and more, public libraries over purported “obscenity.”
Kobabe spoke about eir subsequent guide on eir highlight panel at SPX, as reported by Brigid Alverson.
“It was written principally primarily based on suggestions I obtained when Gender Queer first got here out,” Kobabe mentioned, “from dad and mom who would say, I learn this and it was so helpful, however my gender non-conforming baby is like, 12, or 10, or 8, or 6, slightly too younger for this guide. Quite a lot of dad and mom requested me, ‘Would you ever make an all-ages model of Gender Queer,’ and I used to be like, I don’t wish to abridge my memoirs, however I may write a brand new guide that hopefully is addressing what you’re asking me, which is, ‘I desire a guide about gender identification and sexuality, however that’s applicable for a youthful reader.’ In order that’s what impressed me to wish to work on the guide.”
Regardless of the controversy over Gender Queer, the guide has by no means been marketed as a youngsters’s guide, though it gained an Alex Award from the ALA, which acknowledges “books revealed for adults that maintain crossover attraction for readers aged 12 to 18.”
