Reading: YASMINA AND THE POTATO EATERS: PART 1 - Mannaert Wauter

Yasmina is a young girl living in a small apartment with her father in Belgium. She is also, especially for an eleven-year-old, already an accomplished chef with a passion for food, made even better by the fact she chooses to make healthy meals with fresh ingredients ... many of which Yasmina sort of pilfers from the rooftop garden of the top-floor tenant of her building, as Yasmina's dad works a low-wage job barely getting them by. Yasmina is skilled, her dishes unique and flavorful thanks also to the ingredients she gets from a couple of locals, friends, growing fresh produce in their own community gardens. But unbeknownst to the young chef and her friends, an insidious industrialized company plans to flood the market with a variety of addictive, potato-based processed foods, and soon gardens are bulldozed to make room for growing potatoes. When Yasmina's rooftop antics are found out and she's forced to purchase produce from a store, the young girl finds - to her horror - that the town and people she's known and loved aren't the same anymore, thanks to this new product. This wonderful graphic novel ends with quite a cliffhanger for Part 1, leaving the reader wanting more, but with beautifully-detailed art befitting the gritty western-European flavor of the characters and story (not to mention a plucky, engaging heroine in the form of Yasmina), it's still a joy getting there.  4/5 stars

Note: I received a free ARC of this title from NetGalley and the publisher, in exchange for an honest review.