Latinx Kids Find Fantasy and Family in ‘Hotel Dare’

Writer: Terry Blas/ Artist: Claudia Aguirre / Boom! Studios It’s not your typical family vacation when Charlotte, and her adopted siblings Darwin and Olive find themselves falling into other worlds as they explore Grandma Lupé’s strange hotel. — Hotel Dare The Dare Family Charlotte and adopted siblings Darwin and Olive are forced to spend their summer with their estranged Grandmother at her run down and very creepy hotel, in Hotel Dare a graphic novel from Boom! Studios. The trio of kids is bored out of their mind doing chores. Young Charlotte isn’t taking well to her new family bonds, and older sister Olive is dead set on figuring out why their father and grandmother’s relationship went sour. Thanks to inquisitive Charlotte, a simple dare of going into Mama Lupe’s forbidden locked office has them stumbling upon an incredible secret… the hotel has rooms that can transport folks to other realms, other worlds. This activates a struggle across worlds and unearths a family secret that is an adventure in the making.

It’s a treat to see blended families and children of color in comics in nuanced and thoughtful representations. A Latinx family is infrequently the center of a book by a major comics publication. Terry Blas (Dead Weight, The Amazing World of Gumball) spins a narrative about siblings exploring not just new and exciting places — like a world of magic users or a pirate space ship of some kind — but also exploring what family means to them and the growing pains that …