What do a vampire, a slime mold, a skeleton, a mad scientist and a mummy have in common? They’re all students at Monstrocity School. And they’re also all close friends of young werewolf Olivia Wolf, the protagonist in the zany Olivia Wolf graphic novels for readers age 7-10.

In Olivia Wolf and the Trip Through Time, the fourth in the series, everyone at Monstrocity School is excited about the science fair. Olivia has invented the snore switcher, which turns raucous snoring into dulcet lullabies. Andy the skeleton has come up with rubberized imitation flesh ears to stick to his skull (so that he doesn’t have to hold his glasses on his head). Greta (the oldest of them all) has dreamed up speed-reading hands, three sets of hands to turn pages on three books at a time, and Vane, the mad scientist, has created a time machine tube slide to go into the past or future. And so forth.

When Mario the Mummy gets sick, Dr. Jekyll, the school doctor, diagnoses him with Nile fever, declaring, “There’s only one cure: staring into the magical eye of the sun god, Ra, in the central chamber of the great pyramid in Gyza.” Since the pyramid disappeared hundreds of years earlier, the only solution is to travel back in time to ancient Egypt using Vane’s science project, with the caveat that, “This is the first test of the time machine tube slide. I hope there are no unintended consequences…”
 
 Of course, there are.

Everyone’s project comes in handy as the friends make their way to the magical eye for Mario’s cure. Then they rush back, just in time for the science fair. But if you want to know who wins–not to mention the aforementioned unintended consequences–you’ll have to read this wonderfully wacky graphic novel about a bunch of unusual but fabulous friends.

Olivia Wolf and the Trip Through Time
Written and illustrated by José Fragoso
Translated from the Spanish by Cecilia Ross
ISBN: 978-84-10406-13-1
2025, NubeOcho

Review: Kirkus

You can buy a copy here* or find a copy of it at a library.

*Book purchases made via our affiliate link may earn GLLI a small commission at no cost to you.

Award-winning opera singer Nanette McGuinness is the translator of over 140 books and graphic novels for children and adults from French, Italian, German and Spanish into English, including the much-loved Geronimo Stilton Graphic Novels, as well as Tiki: A Very Ruff Year (nominated for the 2023 Eisner and Harvey Awards) and Alice on the Run: One Child’s Journey Through the Rwandan Civil War (2023 GLLI YA Translated Book Prize Honor Book, 2023 Mosaic Prize winner, 2023 Excellence in Graphic Literature Finalist and 2023 Harvey Award nominee). Accolades have also gone to her translations of Up in the Blue Sky: Journey from the Earth’s Surface to Outer Space (2025 Junior Library Guild Gold Standard Selection), Ellie in First Position (2024 ALA Top Ten Graphic Novels for Children; Texas Library Association’s Little Maverick graphic novel reading list), Magical History Tour: Vikings and Magical History Tour: Gandhi (both 2023 Excellence in Graphic Literature Finalists), Luisa: Now and Then (2019 Stonewall Honor Book; 2020 GLLI YA Translated Honor Book; YALSA’s Great Graphic Novels for Teens in 2019) and California Dreamin’: Cass Elliot Before the Mamas & the Papas (2018 Harvey Award; YALSA’s Great Graphic Novels for Teens in 2018).