A spirited graphic novel twines characters from two traditional fairy tales into a fresh, funny new story. When Rapunzel discovers that her “mother,” Gothel, stole her as a baby, the girl rebels and is locked up in a tree that has grown to towering proportions by Gothel’s use of magic. Rapunzel’s hair grows copiously, too, fashioning the means of her escape. Swinging to freedom, she is determined to rescue her real mother from Gothel’s mines, where she has toiled for years. Rapunzel soon meets Jack, a young man with troubles of his own, whose only companion is a goose unwilling to lay eggs. After Rapunzel rescues Jack from a sticky situation with a rapid crack of her lariat braids, they become inseparable. Their clashing values (Jack is not above a little larceny for a good cause—the best cause being his own well-being) and droll exchanges can’t mask their growing fondness for each other. Likewise, their knack for stumbling into trouble is mitigated by their ever-growing finesse at getting out of it, often helping the citizens whom Mother Gothel has been terrorizing with her magic along the way. Shannon and Dean Hale establish the humor with Rapunzel’s self-deprecating storytelling and the lively exchanges between characters, while Nathan Hale’s full-color panel illustrations fulfill the possibilities of this witty tale full of long-haired heroism. (Ages 10–15)