Rocket and Groot: Keep on Truckin'!

Gr 3–5—Rocket Raccoon and Groot, members of the Marvel superhero team Guardians of the Galaxy, have crash-landed on the planet Happyhappyfunfun. They were hoping to refuel but instead discover that the planet's peace-loving population is being held hostage by maniacal self-driving vehicles programmed to follow the most dangerous tropes of car chase movies. Sharp-edged, impatient Rocket and persistent Groot are perfect foils for each other, and Veronica, "the awesome tape dispenser," continues to ingeniously save the day with robotic intelligence and lots of tape. There are scrawled color illustrations (by Rocket), and the story is told through the characters' dialogue, with a different typeface for each character. This dynamic format conveys a large amount of action at a quick pace and will entice readers of heavily illustrated fiction, such as "Diary of a Wimpy Kid" and Angleberger's own "Origami Yoda" series as well as fans of quirky action comics, such as Jeff Brown's "Jedi Academy." This should have wide appeal, even to readers unfamiliar with the Guardians of the Galaxy franchise.