Brie Spangler’s Kickturn, a Skateboarding Self Discovery Graphic Novel

Kickturn is a middle-grade graphic novel by Brie Spangler of the upcoming Fox Point’s Own Gemma Hopper, this time about a 10-year-old girl travelling the country with her parents in a skoolie (a converted school bus) when she discovers skateboarding.

Brie Spangler posts on Instagram “New book announcement!! Thank you @knopfkids @rhkidsgraphic @randomhousekids for the opportunity to bring this new #middlegrade #graphicnovel about girls who skateboard to the page! So excited!! #welovecomics”. A graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design, Brie Spangler is an author/illustrator of children’s picture books, graphic novels, and YA novels. Her YA novel Beast was nominated for a Lambda Award and was named a Best Book of the Year by Publishers Weekly and Kirkus.

Erin Clarke at Knopf has bought world rights to Kickturn to be published in the spring of 2025. Brie Spangler’s agent Mackenzie Brady Watson at Stuart Krichevsky Literary Agency negotiated the deal

Alfred A. Knopf Books for Young Readers is an imprint of Random House Children’s Books and Rotem Moscovich is its Editorial Director, after previously working at Disney Hyperion.

Stuart Krichevsky Literary Agency is a leading, independent New York literary agency representing a distinguished list of bestselling and award-winning authors. Founded by Stuart Krichevsky in 1995 and originally focusing on narrative non-fiction and literary journalism, the agency has expanded to a team of seven agents with a across all genres.

The expansion of children’s graphic novels is fuelling all manner of publishers extending into the comics medium. Right now it seems like an infinite market that is being tapped into, and creating longstanding comic book readers for decades to come. It is not for nothing that kids graphic novels in bookstores are being referred to as the newsstand of the twenty-first century, and the recent shutdowns have put a fire underneath it recently.