Mighty Meg and the magical ring by Sammy Griffin, illustrated by Micah Player

This beginning chapter is another "girl discovers superpowers", similar to Mia Mayhem. At her birthday party, Meg gets a special ring from her aunt, who is an archeologist. That night, she dreams of being a warrior queen in armor, fighting in a battle. The next day, strange things begin to happen - she has super strength! She can leap rivers! She does some tests and realizes it is indeed the ring giving her powers, but when she sees their neighbor's dog struggling in a swollen river, her powers aren't enough - she needs to be brave to rescue him as well. The story ends with Meg choosing her superhero name, realizing she'll have to lie to her parents sometimes, and foreshadowing her next adventure.

While the text is in a larger font, it's still pretty dense for a beginning chapter book. It's also fairly high-level, more middle grade than beginning chapter. It's illustrated in a somewhat blurry, muddy style in oranges and blacks. There are illustrations on every page, but they're not seamlessly integrated with the text, making it sometimes difficult to read the text itself.

Meg is eight and this just didn't work for me. Now, the only "non-canon" superheroes that my library kids really like are Captain Underpants and Captain Awesome - they usually don't go for the "kids with superpowers" books, but this one really didn't thrill me. While it's great to see a black girl as the main character, I was skeptical about her "dream" of being a Viking warrior. No blood is shown, but it had definite violent overtones, way too much for an eight year old. It's certainly wish-fulfillment, in how she can just disappear after school with nobody looking for her and a quick lie/apology smooths everything over, but it didn't sound right. Basically, this didn't sound like a real child and the text was oddly elaborate and/or stiff in places.

Verdict: If you have kids that enjoy this genre and are strong readers, it's an additional choice. Otherwise, I prefer Gumazing Gum Girl by Rhode Montijo.

ISBN: 9781499808322; Published January 2019 by little bee; Borrowed from another library in my consortium