Kind of a weird graphic novel. I like Yasmina. Not sure where the story was going but was resolved in the end. I did enjoy the cycling reference in the middle. Not my favorite but worth the read. I could see the appeal to cooking, sci-fi lovers out there.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the DRC.

I loved the art and use of color. The story was exciting and will prompt kids to think about what kind of food they are eating.

Though there are lots of books about kids in the kitchen, this one sets itself apart by being the only one to add a fantasy element into the mix.

This quirky middle grade graphic novel follows young chef Yasmina who notices that her community’s obsession with a new breed of potato has everyone behaving like dogs. The book’s sci-fi mishaps are reminiscent of films like The Stuff and The Fly and it offers similar critiques of capitalism and consumerism. I really enjoyed the neat, delicate art style, and the emphasis on the visuals with limited use of text. Yasmina’s world is charming with beautiful rooftop gardens and I appreciated the focus on urban foraging and community gardens. The book engages with a lot of different debates over food including GMOs and the use of pesticides but unfortunately it reduces these complex issues to homemade vegetarian food = good; processed food = bad. I wish the novel had taken a more nuanced view that considered issues of class and avoided using the language of addiction to describe relationships to food which comes across as food shaming. This is unfortunate because I don’t think that was the intention; there’s a really lovely afterward by the author where he discusses that French fries are the national dish in Belgium and I wish we’d gotten to see a glimpse of this appreciation in the book. It is very possible that Chef Yasmina reads differently within this Belgium context than it does for North American readers who are so used to seeing fast food constantly demonized.

Just okay. I enjoyed the main character but I found some of the story to be a little cheesy and I lost interest.

This was a super cute middle grade graphic novel about a young girl who loves to experiment with cooking and how she helps cure her town when they eat some bad potatoes that make them all start acting like dogs!!! I think it would be a fun one for children.

I must not have read the synopsis before reading this, because I sure didn't expect something of a parable about GMOs. Yasmina is a fun, strong protagonist who loves to cook and is not going to be taken down by some crazy new potato chips that make everyone act like dogs! Yasmina and the Potato Panic is a fun read and I see why it is a Junior Library Guild selection!

I really enjoy when a young main character solves a problem that adults have created and this book did that very well. The storyline was engaging and the illustrations were so beautiful. Mannaert’s work is new to me, but I’m looking forward to checking out more.

Perfect for fans of Measuring Up and With the Fire on High.

A fun graphic novel about a young chef who loves using fresh, local ingredients to create unique and tasty meals. When she discovers a brand of snack foods is up to no good, she has to get involved.

Fun, humorous story that will also make you think about what goes in your food. The illustrations help add a lot to the story and are well done. I wish the characters had been fleshed out a lot more - they’re a bit one dimensional. Why does Yasmina love to cook? How does her dad not realize they have no money to eat, and that Yasmina gets all the food from two local gardeners? Questions like these left me lingering for more story building and character development.

<i>Thanks to NetGalley for a free ARC in exchange for an honest review.</i>

Nice story, if a little hard to follow at times, just don't think it would hold the interest of the kids at my library.

**ARC provided by NetGalley for review**

Chef Yasmina and the Potato Panic was a fun middle-grade graphic novel about a healthy and ambitious young girl who's a cooking whiz and a mysterious potato company that tries to ruin everything!

This was a simple story and a fun adventure for kids. Although it left me with a couple lingering questions about the characters, I didn't have any problems with the writing itself. It was nice to see how Yasmina helped out at home while dad was at work. She was such a (mostly) responsible and creative character; I think kids would really enjoy. The art was great also.

To be posted on Jan 26 on GoodReads:

Yasmina loves to cook and prepare fresh veggies for her father and herself in creative ways. She relies heavily on the local community garden for her creations. When a big company growing dubious potatoes destroys the garden and starts cranking out products that have people acting VERY strangely, Chef Yasmina is on the case of how to reverse what they’ve done and take down the company.

I’m totally fine with some imaginative scifi about what crazy scientists can do with wacky machines. As a former biology teacher, I think it is sad how people get psyched out about genetically modified foods purely because they don’t understand the science. I hope kids will view this as pure fictional entertainment and do some careful study of how recombinant DNA science really works (I’ll give you a sneak preview…you cannot incorporate the DNA of what you eat into your own DNA…unless you are feasting on viruses instead of normal dietary choices).

Notes on content: No language issues. No sexual content. One person is turned into vegetable. People act like animals, including some biting. Yasmina is not above stealing veggies when she can’t get them from other places and doesn’t seem very sorry about doing so.

<i>I received an ARC of this title from Harvest House through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.</i>

I thought Chef Yasmina and the Potato Panic was a fun adventure with an unexpected twist. A great middle grade graphic novel.

Yasmina thrives on cooking fresh food for her father. When the community garden is destroyed and people start going crazy for chips, she gathers together a rag tag gang to solve the mystery.

Yasmina is a young chef who loves to work with food. Her dad works in a french fry restaurant (frites! frites!) where he coworkers eat their fill of fast food, while Yasmina makes sure to send her father healthy greens, spring rolls, and vegetable dishes. The family is strapped for cash, so Yasmina gets her fresh ingredients from her wacky friends at the neighborhood garden and, occasionally, from the mysterious neighbor's rooftop garden. But something weird is afoot when the community garden is bought out by a wealthy corporation and plowed over with scientifically enhanced potatoes that cause some strange behavior in anyone who eats them! Not only are they obsessed with the taters, they've started barking, slobbering, and howling at the moon. Yasmina needs to find out what's going on, fast!

Yasmina is quirky, but tends to be a little hard to follow. The smaller panels contribute to this; it's hard to see what's going on and subtle nuances may go missing with a first read. The artwork is fun and colorful, with exaggerated facial expressions and body behavior, but the main point of the plot - the genetically modified foods versus the small community garden - may get lost. Overall, an interesting read that I'm going to put in my library and talk up, because I think it's a good book for discussion, but this may be an additional purchase for strapped budgets.

This book is weird. There is really no other word for it. We get rival farmers (organic vs GMO crops), a corporate evil mastermind, and potatoes that make people act like dogs. Protagonist Yasmina is a quick-thinking, likable heroine (even though she does steal her neighbors' plants a lot). The story has a somewhat disturbing ending--the bad guy meets his demise, but the overall ethics of the story are a little out of whack. The art, featuring a pastel color palate, is very attractive, although small panels make the dialogue hard to read in places. The story raises ethical questions about use of pesticides and corporate greed. Unusual and certainly original. 8 to 12.

What an odd story. Normally, I do not mind the strangeness of certain stories, but the plot holes in this are sometimes too big to look past. But the illustrations? Fantastic. I do think kids will gravitate towards this based on the plot, but I do wish the cover was a bit more telling. It will be a bit of a hard sell.

A cute MG graphic novel about a girl trying to take care of/feed her single dad, facilitated by her friendship with a few community gardeners. A greedy corporation wanting to sell their product causes the public to turn into potato-eating zombie-adjacent beings, and Yasmina and her friends must use science, smarts, and their love of food and farming to save her dad and the rest of their town.

Read more graphic novel reviews at www.graphiclibrary.org.

Yasmina is an aspiring young chef who fills her dad’s lunchbox with delicious and fresh foods. He works at a French fry eatery, but she insists on fresh ingredients that she often obtains from a neighborhood garden. That is, until a big conglomerate comes in, buys the land, and razes the gardens to plant potato fields. Yasmina resorts to stealing veggies and herbs from a neighbor’s garden on the roof of her building, but she’s eventually caught and made to stop. She tries to spend her meager savings on some fresh foods from the market, but she instead finds all the fresh ingredients have been replaced by potato crisps in bags, and her fellow townspeople are going nuts for them! Yasmina and her friends from the garden must get to the bottom of the mystery of these potato crisps and why they’re turning the townspeople into crazy animals, and her upstairs neighbor may have something to do with it all.

Yasmina is so full of energy, and reading this made me hungry for some fresh foods. She is very passionate about food and her family, and she expresses her love for her father in being able to cook for him. There is a bit of a criticism to cultures prioritizing convenience food rather than homemade with fresh ingredients, as well as the harm being done to the environment by large corporate farming.

The art is interesting. There are whole pages without dialogue, but the story is easy to follow. There are no panel outlines like traditional graphic novels. Make sure readers have a firm grasp on narrating wordless pages and following the flow without panels