Long Distance by Whitney Gardner (review)

Already bummed about moving to Seattle, introvert Vega is even more annoyed when her dads force her to go to camp, an effort to make her find some new friends. Vega isn't interested in replacing her BFF Halley, with whom she shares a love of astronomy, and keeps a distance from the other kids. The camp counselors are overly sunny, though, and Vega and other campers keep finding weird stuff in the woods—a strange pinecone (which turns out to be a satellite phone), metal rocks, and a hollow boulder. It's all a bit unsettling, enough so that Vega teams up with several other kids to figure out what on Earth is going on, only to discover they're no longer on Earth. This is a pleasantly goofy take on the perpetual middle grade conundrum of balancing new and old friendships, and the extraterrestrial twist offers a playful silliness but keeps a knowing sense of compassion for Vega's struggles to negotiate new social dynamics. The art is pretty standard fare with the cartoony style made popular by Raina Telgemeier, but the alien the kids encounter, with its gaggle of eyeballs and tentacle-like appendages, is surprisingly expressive, moving from angrily blaming Vega and her new pals for wanting to leave to then sadly explaining its own loneliness. This recalls Gardner's Fake Blood (BCCB 10/18) but with supernatural elements replaced by intergalactic ones, and the satisfying blend of relatable angst and kooky weirdness will make this a winner for fans of that title.