Alice in Kyoto Forest #2

Mai Mochizuki's delicate watercolor cover for this second volume is an absolute delight — a red-braided Alice in her blue pinafore reaches upward amid a lush garden of tulips, wildflowers, and soft blooms, while a boy rests against her and a dapper white rabbit clutches a pocket watch nearby. The whimsical Alice in Wonderland reimagining gets a distinctly Japanese sensibility through Haruki Niwa's writing and Mochizuki's illustration, and this 2022 Tokyopop release radiates the kind of gentle, dreamy charm that makes you want to linger on every page.