Babymouse: Queen of the World! and Babymouse: Our Hero -- Jennifer L. Holm & Matthew Holm

These are fun little comic books geared towards the Junie B. Jones and Judy Moody set.  (Maybe publishers are trying to hit the female population of the Captain Underpants age-bracket?)  Babymouse dresses much girlier than Judy Moody, but she likes monsters and other fun stuff.  She's pretty fun -- without warning, she'll float off into daydreams and imaginings. 

She has to deal with getting up in the morning, a locker that eats her homework, a mean girl (Felicia Furrypaws, an extremely popular student who has naturally straight whiskers) and in the second volume, (cue horror-movie music) DODGEBALL.  (I did think that was odd, actually -- I don't remember dodgeball being completely unbearable until high school, but maybe I was just lucky.)  She likes watching monster-movie marathons with her best friend, Wilson the Weasel, fun books (not boring ones) and eating cupcakes.

Back to the dodgeball weirdness, though:  I think that there's something a little off.  Judging from the problems that she's dealing with, Babymouse should be geared to the late elementary school/ealry middle school set.  But the dialogue and her personality seem to be geared younger -- check out her website to see what I mean.  Maybe slightly immature 4-6th grade girls will like her?  That seems like a pretty narrow audience, though.  I'm curious to see what age group will end up really embracing her.