I love Sventlana Chmakova's works and this is no exception! It was great! I think middle graders will really enjoy this, as well as any adults who like the author's previous work.

Thank you to NetGalley for granting this ARC, super cute and fast read. The illustrations were adorable and the story was cute.

Fun and creepy story. Magic, friendship, and family, along with a life-or-death fight with evil. The illustrations are great, but there’s inconsistency, with a few odd and out of place with the others.

First and foremost, this is a very cute graphic novel! The art style is very appealing, and it is probably my favorite aspect of the book.

The graphic novel's premise is intriguing, and it's a lot of fun. The characters are also cute, even if I think they're a little too childish at times.

Overall, this was a fun book to read.

I love a good supernatural graphic novel. Add in shifters and I'm sold. This was magical and spooky and atmospheric and just a delight to read.

sadly, before i could download this title, netgalley took it off their catalog. that means i can’t review this one. HOWEVER, i will be checking in with my library to see if i can get a copy and review it that way

I love Chmakova's more recent work, but this reprint of an earlier work just doesn't feel as strong. Maybe she was perfecting her craft here?

Thank you to Netgalley and the author for allowing me to read this!

AMAZING WORK! The art was amazing! This author did amazing. I loved the story and the plot of this graphic novel! I highly recommend.

What an amazing read. I have truly enjoyed going through this phenomenal work.As far as the writing style and narration is concerned, it is really good. Overall, a good reading experience. Highly recommended

'The Weirn Books, Vol. 1' with story and art by Svetlana Chmakova is a graphic novel about young magic users who live in the Night Realm.

Weirns are like vampires, but not. They attract interesting shadow pets. Allis and Na'ya are young weirns who still go to school. When a bully in the school starts to act unusually nice, and Na'ya's little brother disappears, they are suspicious. The investigation leads them to a forbidden mansion in the Silent Woods and a secret that has lasted for years.

I liked this story of unusual creatures and magic. The worldbuilding is interesting. The art has a manga style that was appealing.

I received a review copy of this graphic novel from Yen Press and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Thank you for allowing me to review this graphic novel.

Svetlana Chmkova can sell a book by her name alone at this point. Awkward, Brave, and Crush are gorgeous, gentle, relevant stories about life in middle school. They pull kids in and keep them reading. Based on these beauties I was excited to finally see how her storytelling and art translated into fantasy. Chmakova’s new series brings her back to a world she already knows well. From what I can tell, she wrote about weirns and their night school adventures already, though for high school, not the middle graders this one targets.

The Characters: Everybody’s adorable again!! (How does she do that?) Werewolf Russ is cute, kind, and mature-ish. D’esh so very happy and trusting. Jasper, with his deviant astral throwing this and breaking that, so not confident. The cousins are absolute dorks and somewhat prone to causing problems, but they’re either fine with that or not completely self-aware yet? Ailis’s grandma is pretty great, too. She makes no apologies and does weird stuff if her grand kids annoy her, like licking (or claiming to have licked) Ailis’s chocolate roll when she doesn’t wake up fast enough.

While the astrals hurt my eyes (they’re like optical illusions that never lock into place), they are also adorable and loyal; a combination of adoring pets, tiny children, and protective bouncers for their humans. My favourite moment is when Ailis’s astral is begging for its chocolate roll (the one grandma didn’t lick).

I liked the characters and their interactions better than the story itself. Chmakova knows how to make interesting people. The story itself is pretty standard: mad magical scientist experimenting on children and they will be her newest guinea pigs if they don’t escape.

After two references to angry mermaids, I was really hoping Chmakova was either going to keep randomly bringing up these totally irrelevant creatures (just because...) or that they would turn out having an unexpected key role in the resolution. Alas, there were no more mermaids after page... 2? 3? Maybe they’ll come back in a future book.

In many ways, the Weirn Books series follows standard middle grade plots. The central focus is on school and interaction with peers. Thus we have bullies, popularity, and wanting to gain attention. The surface details make this one stand out from the pack. Sure, it's a magical school. It's also a complex magical world with a lot of associated rules. Magic has a cost, consequences for every spell cast. There is also a horror element, with a creepy building in the woods and a local legend about missing kids, elements that we aren't surprised to learn are associated. The illustrations are fairly cartoony and expressive, keeping this from becoming too creepy for young readers. Just the right level of scary for upper elementary kids. While the plot is fairly predictable, the journey is compelling.

Allis is a weirn, a witch with a demon guardian. She attends school to learn about magic and also has to juggle her family, life as a weirn, and friendships. While out with her friends, they saw a light on in an old school that children disappeared from. Her cousin disappears, so now they all have to find her.

Chemkova wrote and illustrated other wonderful middle-grade books in the Berrybrook Middle School series. (Awkward, Brave, Crush and Diary) In this first volume of a new middle-grade comic series, the Night Realm is a place populated by shifters, vampires, and weirns. Other creatures that appear human live there as well as actual humans. Even so, the children still have to go to school! There are all the usual middle school drama pieces here, with friends and frenemies and nemeses, studying for tests and trying to do specialized training classes. Even if they don't have an astral of their own, kids will still appreciate the struggles of school and friendships. They know to avoid the creepy house in the woods and generally follow the rule until kids disappear again.

I love the art style, and the little touches that show how astrals protect their bonded witches. When it rains, they become umbrellas or will become spiky when a strange figure is stalking the witch. The story is revealed slowly, and the kids are very resourceful and brave in the face of danger. This is a great start to the series, with a final page that tells us that everything is not as calm or safe as the children all think it is.

Good art. Good lettering. A nice little story. A bit too much in the way of Basil Exposition early in the book hampers the pace at the start.

This was such a cute read! I loved it! I wasn't too crazy about the art, but the story and the magical world were just amazing. The characters were cure and "natural" as they can be in a world like this, and I can't wait to read more by the author.

This was my first introduction to the Nightschool world, after being a big fan of Chmakova's realistic middle grade books. Naturally, I immediately had to go back and read all of the Nightschool series. There's something special to that layer of intrigue in a story when the kids in an already magical world find a new magical mystery. Ailis and N'aya are charming and funny and their band of friends and family insulate against the darkness of the mystery they are drawn in to. I can't wait to share this book with so many kids.

This was such a cute and fun graphic novel! This was the first time that I have read anything by Svetlana Chmakova and I must say that I enjoyed myself. I definitely plan on checking out further volumes in this series. Anyway, onto more about Be Wary of the Silent Woods.

The first thing I would like to write about is the art style. As you can see by the cover it’s adorable, I also found it very fitting to the whole atmosphere of the story. By which I mean that it felt very whimsical. The characters were good, but I didn’t particularly fall in love with them. The dialogue between them felt a bit over the top, which is understandable since they are children. I think someone younger would enjoy this graphic novel a lot. I especially enjoyed seeing the familial relationships in this story, they were so sweet. The story was interesting, I enjoyed learning more about the school and the magic of the world. There were some things that I found predictable, but that was expected since this graphic novel is aimed towards a younger audience.

Overall I enjoyed The Weirn Books Vol. 1 quite a bit. The story and setting were fun, I enjoyed learning more about the characters and there were some very heartfelt moments. I would definitely recommend checking this graphic novel out.

Having enjoyed the original Nightschool series from Svetlana, I was excited to see the author/artist return to that magical world with a middle grade companion series. This first book even came with color illustrations to enhance the overall appeal, which I liked very much and hope continues going forward. This book’s art didn’t feel quite as refined as the original, but I think that’s due to the change in audience and not the talent and work that the author put forth.

Overall, I enjoyed the story as well as the art. I think my personal issue was that I was hung up trying to remember the original story, which I haven’t read in years and am not sure if I was able to read the final volume or not. So I was looking for familiar pieces with no luck because it’s been too long and I should have just made a point to read the original. I think if I wasn’t so focused on that I would have better enjoyed the story as presented because it was both creepy and well told.

I’m looking forward to future books in this series and will try to hunt down the original series as well 🙂

I totally LOVED this graphic novel, it was so adorable. I loved the storyline/plot. I also enjoyed all the different characters that are all likeable in their own little ways. I love the mystery/ creepy vibe to it. The illustrations were awesome and very mystical and a little creepy. This book is perfect for middle-grade kids. I'm sure they will love it.

I would like to say thank you to NetGalley and Yen Press for giving me the chance to read and review this very cute book.

In 2020 I requested this book but was never approved until just recently. I'd kind of forgotten about it in the mean time. But I am glad that was still approved because this little middle grade graphic novel is just very cute.

The story follows Ailis and her cousin Na'Ya and their friends. Both are Weirn which is a type of witch that is also connected to a spirit. The spirits are fiercly protective of them and have their own personalities and preferences. They don't go to a regular school but to the Night school. A school at night as the name suggests. It is where they as weirn but also other supernatural creatures like vampires and werewolves go for schooling.

The two always take a shortcut through the woods and pass an old and abandoned school. But is it really that abandoned? When a weird creature takes one of their classmates and Na'Ya's little brother they take it upon themselves to investigate the matter.

Ailis and Na'Ya are best friends and quirky little things. They always seem to get into trouble for trying to be themselves. But they are fiercelely protective of each other and their family. Their interactions with their grandma, Na'Ya's little brother and their friends are cute and feel real.

The whole of the setting is also really interesting. The idea of a night realm and a night school I've always found interesting. But also the Weirn is an interesting kind of idea. There have been previous graphic novels set in this world by this author I saw, but I don't think they are middle grade as this one is. In any case I can't wait to see how this story will be continued.