Parents' Guide to Dungeons & Dragons: Dungeon Club: Roll Call, Book 1

Parents need to know that Dungeons & Dragons: Roll Call, is a middle grade graphic novel about two friends who love playing Dungeons & Dragons. It's the first book in the Dungeon Call series. The story is about friendship, standing up to kids who show bullying behavior, and working together as a team to achieve goals. Main character, Jess, is nice but has trouble meeting new people. Still, Jess (and friends, Olivia and Tyler) are all good kids who just like telling stories and playing make-believe adventures. They display humility and compassion and learn how to stand up to mean kids who make fun of them. In their game, which they play on the kitchen or dining room table, they use diagrams, charts, figurines, maps, and dice, to help imagine and play their adventure. In the graphic novel, their adventure is illustrated, and lots of fantastical and magical elements of the D&D universe are featured, including well-known monsters, creatures, magic spells, weapons, and character traits. All the violence is fantasy-based and cartoonish, and there's no blood. However, some monsters or situations might be scary for younger readers. For instance, one of the monster descriptions says: "Gnoll: Slaughtering their victims and devouring their flesh." Various monsters and creatures are shown, including Cthulu-type monsters, frog soldiers, large trolls, huge beetle monsters, and fiery dragons. In the game, kids face peril, cave-ins, being chased, being attacked, traps, being caught in big spider webs, and magic wielding wizards. Also in game, monsters are kicked and punched, hit with weapons, cut in half, exploded, hit with firebombs and magic spells, stabbed in the hand, and thrown into acidic rivers. In the real world, at school, kids face bullying from other kids. One kid gets harassed for "being gay" and gets slammed into lockers. Another kid gets teased and hand sanitizer squirted into her face. Language includes: "boobs," "bully," "freaking," "perverted," and "gay."