Dribble Trip Up by Daniel Mauleon, illustrated by Ceej Rowland

 I usually make several orders from individual publishers each year, usually Capstone and Lerner. This year, I ordered a lot of different transitional chapters/early comics from Capstone to try out a number of different series. This title is part of the Slam Dunk Graphics series. Like the other series I tried out, the book's format is that of an easy reader, in a 9x6 rectangle, and includes typical material for Capstone, from a guide to reading comics at the beginning to discussion questions and a brief author/illustrator bio at the end.

The story features Miguel, the brown-skinned, blue-haired boy on the cover, who loves to play basketball but struggles with his dribbling skills. He's helped to overcome his fear and practice to get better by his best friend Scott, a Black boy, and their coach, Carmen, a woman with light brown skin and curly brown hair. The team includes children of different genders and skin colors, but they all have the same skinny body shape and no visible disabilities.

The illustrations show lots of action and movement and yellow-boxed text narrates the action, in addition to the speech bubbles, which is a big help for beginning readers. The text is short and simple and the story moves quickly.

Verdict: If, like me, you are interested in building a transitional chapters collection and have a lot of lower level readers who want comics and need shorter, simpler reads, this is a strong addition to the library collection, especially with the sports theme which can be hard to find at this level.

ISBN: 9781484680421; Published August 2023 by Capstone; Purchased for the library