It's Marvelous Middle Grade Monday: Haru: Book 1: Spring (Volume 1) by Joe Latham

Haru: Book 1: Spring by Joe 

Latham

Publisher:  Andrews McMeel Publishing
Format:  E-ARC
Number of pages:   272 pages
Publishing:   March 12th, 2024
Source:  NetGalley

Opening Line:  "At the dusk of man there was a darkness that spread far and wide across the land."

Chapter one begins with black and white illustrations and alludes to a darkness traveling across the land until it was snagged on a thorn of pure light.  Unable to free itself, the darkness encapsulated its heart within the brambles of the thorns.   The story then jumps to present day to Haru, a small blue bird who despite being unable to fly still has big dreams of one day taking flight, and their best friend Yama, a boar who finds a strange, cursed artifact.  The artifact attaches itself to Yama and the two friends then find themselves on a journey to The Beacon in search of the answers to removing it.  

Haru is a beautifully illustrated graphic novel, a coming-of-age story that also highlights the four seasons with Spring being the first volume.  The colors of each page range from a muted turquoise background reminding me of the early dusk sky, to lighter shades of green indicative of daytime.  With further pages having shades of yellows and pink.  This volume is broken down into six chapters and chronicles Haru and Yama's journey to remove a cursed artifact.    The atmosphere is very mysterious and shifts between darkness and periods of light to some downright creepy moments.  I felt a sense of apprehension as I flipped pages and wondered what peril was in store for these two.  And boy do they get into some sticky, dangerous situations.  Everything moves along at a fairly quick pace and yet it still feels like some details were being left out, with some confusing points when Haru and Yama entered the mall.  I wanted to know more, which I suspect will be revealed in one of the other seasons.  Overall, I really loved the illustrations and would love to read more but might hold off until the full series is released, as the completed series will fill in all those missing pieces and questions that I had.       

 I hope you'll check out all the other Marvelous Middle-Grade Monday posts at Greg Pattridge's blog HERE