J vs. K by Kwame Alexander & Jerry Craft (Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, 240 pages, grades 3-6). K is new at the Dean Ashley Public School (DAPS), but he’s already making a name for himself with his writing. J is the best artist at DAPS, hoping to win the school’s annual story contest with one of his wordless comics, but worried that K will be stiff competition. Before long, K and J are out to sabotage each other, with K giving J bogus writing tips, and J purposely leaving a notebook full of bad drawing advice for K to find. When they team up on the basketball court, though, they turn out to be unstoppable, leading them to a decision to put their differences aside and work together on creating a graphic story. Although a dark horse wins it all, the two still place in the contest, and it looks like it will be the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

This is a cute illustrated chapter book which will undoubtedly appeal to Diary of a Wimpy Kid fans, but somehow I expected more from the Newbery Award winning team of Kwame Alexander and Jerry Craft. The plot was predictable from the beginning, and the authors seemed more concerned with inserting jokes and jabs at each other and making references to their other books than developing interesting characters. I’m sure the names on the cover will sell lots of copies, though, and I would not be surprised to see a sequel.

The Lemonade War: the graphic novel by Jacqueline Davies, illustrated by Karen De la Vega (Clarion Books, 207 pages, grades 3-7). Evan is feeling angry that his younger sister Jessie is skipping a grade and will be in his class at school. He lashes out at her, hurting her feelings. So when he and Scott (who turns out to be the neighborhood bully) team up to sell lemonade, Jessie asks another girl to partner with her for a rival stand. The siblings end up making a winner-take-all bet about which enterprise will make more money. Jessie has business and math smarts, while Evan is more gregarious and makes friends easily. The rivalry grows until things get completely out of hand and the two wind up sabotaging each other…and themselves. Admitting how things went wrong leads them to realize all the business lessons they learned, and they’re able to create a prize-winning project at the Rotary Club’s Labor Day contest.

It’s been years since I read the original version of this book, and it was fun to revisit it, with its innocent introduction to the world of capitalism. Each chapter begins with a definition of a business term that is relevant to the story, and all of that new vocabulary is incorporated into their final project. Many readers will relate to both siblings: Jessie shows signs of neurodivergence with her struggles to read people’s expressions and make friends, and Evan’s academic issues make him worry about getting upstaged by his younger sister. The ending is somewhat lame, and the bully appears to get away with stealing most of their money, but don’t worry, The Lemonade Crime gives him his comeuppance. Thanks to Clarion Books for providing me with a review copy.