Best friends don't always have exactly the same interests, but it can be especially fun when what excites one pal complements the thing the other enjoys most.

For Batcat and Al the Ghost, one literally feeds the other: Al loves to cook and Batcat loves to eat. What happens, though, when their favorite hobbies take on a competitive edge?

Batcat: Cooking Contest!, the third volume of Meggie Ramm's early middle-grade graphic novel series, finds the colorful residents of Spooky Island testing their respective skills as part of a local festival.

The book is fun and cute, and it explores Big Emotions.

Ramm will launch Batcat: Cooking Contest! with a signing session at Vault of Midnight in Ann Arbor on Saturday, April 26, 4-6 pm. (They will also be at Sidetrack Books in Royal Oak on April 19 and at Constellation Cat Cafe in Lansing on May 2.)

I spoke with Ramm about the latest book, the origins of Batcat, and what they hope kids and parents will take away from volume three.

Q: These books are so adorable and fun. This is the third Batcat book. So to get us caught up, how would you describe the series and what we have seen so far?
A: Batcat is a series about a little pink character who is a half bat and half cat, and who also identifies as nonbinary. And they live on an island called Spooky Island. Book One is about how the tree house that they live in is haunted by a ghost, and how they want to get rid of the ghost. But eventually, Batcat and the ghost end up being friends.

The second book is an adventure around the Spooky Island's oceans. And this third book is a pal adventure between Batcat and Al the Ghost as they get ready for Nightfest, which is a giant festival on Spooky Island that's mainly about food and hanging out with friends and family. I was trying to do a less problematic Thanksgiving because I really like holidays that are centered around food. Batcat and Al are trying to get ready for a cooking contest, which Al really wants to compete in.

Q: Again, Batcat is such an adorable character. How did they, and their spooky-but-not-really-spooky environment, first take shape? How did you come up with Batcat?
A: Well, I used to teach kids comics in California. That was probably the job that I had longest. I was teaching for 5 to 7 years. And our end project was always for the kids to make a mini-comic, and I'd print out a bunch of copies of that mini-comic, and then I'd make a mini-comic. And on the last day of class, everybody would trade their little mini-comics with each other, and it'd be like a little mini-comic convention, and it was the best day of class ever.

One year I made Batcat, and Batcat came out of me telling my students that if you're going to make a character, it's really easy if you do one that's based on a shape. I've done other comics, and let me tell you, one that's just a circle with points is ideal. That's what Batcat came out of. Somebody saw that mini-comic that I made, and they were like, "Can you make this into a bigger story that you want to give us?" Since they were just like, "We really like this character, but we need a story to go with it," I made it about being nonbinary because I'm nonbinary.

The whole first book is just an allegory for that. Then I made it Spooky Island just because I wanted to draw spooky stuff. I've always wanted to be the super-edgy dark, able-to-do spooky, scary-stories creator, but my art style is just 100% not that. It's just too adorable. So this was me drawing Spooky Island so I could draw skeletons, but I don't think it's actually that scary.

Q: I do appreciate the island witch being "good at problems," both creating them and solving them. That was adorable and hilarious.
A: I feel like there's a tendency for witches in stories to just be the person who solves everything and just be the easy solution. The Island Witch does end up helping out a lot, but I also just really wanted her to just be like, "Sometimes I don't want to be the helpful person. Sometimes I just want to create chaos."

Q: You've talked a bit about wanting to do a book focused on holidays around food. I like that this was both about the cooking and eating. Batcat themself is in an eating contest. Other than just the direct interest in food, what made you want to do this for book three, and are there other food-based graphic novels for kids that you have enjoyed? I feel like I've seen a few.
A: Oh my gosh. I have so many food-based graphic novels. Honestly, the reason that I wanted to do this one about food is just because I really wanted to draw food. The last book, Batcat: Book 2, I really just wanted to draw octopuses, so I made the whole story have octopuses and skeleton mermaids. And my publisher just keeps saying yes to my crazy ideas, which is very, very nice. But I always have Batcat eating something in all of the books because the first book has tacos and cake, and then the second book also has more tacos because I really like tacos. And then the third book has just all of my favorite takeout foods.

I have a lot of kids' comics because I used to teach kids's comics. I'm drawing a blank about names of books, though. The Yummy series is good. I read a lot of manga that's about food. I've been reading a lot of Delicious in Dungeon lately.

Q: Yes, it's so good.
A: I think it's mostly kid-friendly. ... There's two manga series that I've been really into lately. I was reading Delicious in Dungeon, and She Loves to Cook, She Loves to Eat, and they're both so about food. Every other chapter, there's a description of a meal, and I was reading it, and I was like, "Oh, man, American comics. Never are they supposed to be about food. Who's going to do that?" And then as I was thinking about that, I saw my comic, and I was like, "Oh, wait, you did that."

Q: I don't want to spoil what Al the Ghost decides to make, but I noticed you did include the recipe, and I cannot wait to make that. Did you try out any of the other dishes that you describe in the book, like maybe the possums' pumpkin curry? If not, that sounds so good.
A: My partner really likes making Indian food. So I made a list of food that I thought would be on the island that was also harvest-y, and it's an island. I didn't want to do too much seafood chowder. I didn't want to make too many carnivorous-based meals, because if you've got characters that are fish, it becomes a little worrisome. There's the mushroom characters that end up cooking the mushroom soup, which was the one time I made that joke. There's a couple of recipes in there that I've done. The super easy version of Al's recipe was, I swear, the snack that I made for myself after school, every day in middle school and high school, even elementary school. And there's the gourmet version. My birthday was last week, and I ended up making Al's recipe for my birthday because I was like, "Oh, this is good."

Q: Outside of the food, the book also sees Batcat and Al processing a lot of emotions surrounding competition and some nervousness about what's going to happen, what they want to do. From that side, what would you hope that readers take away from this book?
A: I think that all of my Batcat books are focused on an emotion that I had when I was a kid that I didn't have the capacity to really understand or unpack or fully feel and find a way on the other side of. It was a complicated feeling that either I felt bad about or I felt uncomfortable about, and I didn't know how to deal with it when I was that age. I wanted to give Batcat the tools to figure out how to deal with all those emotions.

I think that there's a big tendency when you're younger for parents to be like—at least in the '90s, parenting has changed so much since I was a kid—but I think there's a big tendency to tell kids that if you try really hard and if you practice a lot, you will eventually actually become the best at this thing. Or if you put in all the time and effort, you will succeed in this thing. That's not the case. You can try really hard and you can be  really, really bad at a thing, or you can try really hard and you can be really good, but you might not be the absolute best.

I wanted to give kids the opportunity to feel that through Al's journey in this book and also realize that ... I feel like it takes a really long time when you're a kid because winning is so cool when you're a kid and you want to win. When everybody is clapping for you and maybe you get a prize, but sometimes you don't win, and that feels really bad. And what do you do when that happens? I'm hoping that this gives kids tools to look at the experiences in doing something that they really, really like and they really enjoy not winning at it and still being able to get something out of that experience.

Q: Anything else you'd like to add about Batcat: Cooking Contest or the series as a whole?
A: Just that there's a lot of book bans happening lately, and there's a lot of legislation happening, especially around titles that have queer characters in it. I just hope that Batcat is joined by a whole library of other nonbinary voices and trans and queer voices in the future, just because I think those voices matter. And I've been getting a lot of really fantastic feedback from parents and from kids. And I want there to be more content for them. I'm grateful to be in that group of creators.

Shaun Manning is a founder and former co-owner of Booksweet. He is also a writer of various things, mostly comics. 

Meggie Ramm will launch "Batcat: Cooking Contest!" with a signing session at Vault of Midnight, 219 South Main Street, Ann Arbor, on Saturday, April 26, 4-6 pm. Ramm will also be at Sidetrack Books in Royal Oak on April 19 and at Constellation Cat Cafe in Lansing on May 2.