We speak with authors of swoony graphic novel romances about this growing YA trend. Plus, we’ve got a selection of the season’s biggest titles for kids and teens.
Happy reading!
The romance genre continues to reign supreme with one particular format growing in popularity: the YA graphic novel. We spoke with the creators of six forthcoming projects that display how the graphic novel might just be the new literary fix for lovers of love.
Spring 2026 YA Graphic Novels for Romance Lovers
New romance graphic novels hitting shelves this season feature a summer vacation crush, a secret friendship turned something more, a coming out story, and more.
Jasmine Warga Creates Books and Belonging
Newbery Honor author Jasmine Warga revisits familiar themes in her forthcoming middle grade novel, The Unlikely Tale of Chase and Finnegan—this time starring animals
Spring 2026 Children's Preview: Publishers A-C
Spring 2026 Children's Preview: Publishers D-H
Spring 2026 Children's Preview: Publishers I-O
Spring 2026 Children's Preview: Publishers P-S
Spring 2026 Children's Preview: Publishers T-Z
About Our Cover Artist
Author-illustrator Mika Song is accustomed to pivoting. She grew up in Manila and Honolulu before moving as a young adult to New York City to study art at Pratt Institute, where she started off in printmaking, later switching to illustration and then animation. Speaking with PW from her Queens apartment/studio, she says, “My favorite thing about animation is storyboarding, which is probably the closest part of the process to picture books.” She also credits her experience in the medium with developing a cinematic language that lends itself to graphic novels.
While working for an educational website, Song began creating autobiographical comics on the side, which she shared with colleague Amber Alvarez (who would also go on to create picture books). “She was like, ‘You know, you should try writing stories for children,’ ” Song says. “It had never occurred to me before that. It was actually really fun—I just kept coming up with more stories.” Before long, she was querying, and one of those stories caught the eye of agent Erica Rand Silverman.
Song has gone on to make what she describes in her bio as “children’s books about sweetly funny outsiders.” She’s the creator of the Norma and Belly graphic novel series, the first of which, Donut Feed the Squirrels, earned a 2021 Eisner Award nomination. Three more Norma and Belly books followed, featuring the squirrel pals in food-centric adventures—each with titles catering to kids’ appetites for puns.
Continuing the culinary critter theme, her 2025 standalone graphic novel Night Chef is subtitled An Epic Tale of Friendship with a Side of Deliciousness! The book, published by Random House Graphic, stars a raccoon who covertly lives inside a fine French restaurant and dreams of becoming a chef. It has drawn comparisons to Ratatouille and animated films by Studio Ghibli—fitting, given Song’s previous career.
When asked about her childhood taste in stories, the author names the Pippi Longstocking and Ramona Quimby books, and Charlotte’s Web. “They’re all sort of about outsiders—and funny.” In terms of picture book inspiration, she says, “The Tale of Two Bad Mice by Beatrix Potter really made an impression on me as a kid. I liked that the mice sneaked around while the people were away.” Her Norma and Belly books and Night Chef also trace the secret lives of animal characters.
In addition to her solo projects, Song is the illustrator of Jenn Bailey’s picture book A Friend for Henry and its spin-off chapter book series, about a boy on the autism spectrum and his classmates. The series continues this spring with book four, Henry Upside Down (Chronicle, Apr.). Song praises Bailey’s writing as a key part of what makes the series special. “She’s so sensitive and attuned to character development.” Before they met in person, Song sensed that Bailey intuited “what would be fun for me to draw,” whether that’s dinosaurs sprinkled on ice cream or a school garden with a worm bin. “It’s like a gift.”
Song is currently at work on a new solo series for Random House, with a planned three-book arc, “about a girl who has this amazing robot that she’s just using as a vacuum cleaner—so she has to realize its potential, and her own,” she says. The book requires a transition in style. For Norma and Belly, the illustrator used a dry-brush technique, “which is very scratchy looking, and which fits perfectly for squirrels. But then for humans, we’re a little smoother, a little less hairy”—well, some of us.
