Coming October 27, 2026 from Street Noise, Soft Targets: Guns in America and Kids Caught in the Crossfire is the debut graphic novel by author and journalist Camila Kerwin.

In 2020, gun violence became the leading cause of death for kids and teens in the United States.

About seven kids die from gun violence each day.

Camila first started speaking to the loved ones of children lost to guns for a story on the 2018 Parkland shooting in Florida. She shares in the book, “That reporting ushered me into the broader world of guns and kids in America. For the most part, these stories don’t make national headlines. They’re quiet, daily disasters—the kids who die in the crossfire of gang violence, or at the hands of an angry relative. The troubled kids who find a gun in a parent’s closet. The curious kids who find a gun in a bedside drawer. Families live in the wreckage.”

Camila’s indictment of gun violence and gun culture in the United States takes us through the stories of four families with children who have lost their lives. These personal stories bring home the true consequences of our country’s lax gun regulations; alongside that, the book unpacks how our country got here.

Camila Kerwin is an award-winning journalist who makes comics and radio. She’s a regular comics contributor to The Boston Globe and a founding member of the audio editing studio Rough Cut Collective. Camila illustrated the Edward R. Murrow Award-winning ‘Class of COVID-19: An Education Crisis for Florida’s Vulnerable Students,’ for WLRN. She has been a producer at Marketplace’s This is Uncomfortable, Storycorps, and NPR’s On Point, and an editor at KCRW’s Bodies. Her work has appeared on WNYC, NPR’s Morning Edition, Sony’s Cheat!, PRI’s The World, and in The Miami Herald. She graduated Summa Cum Laude from NYU and holds a master’s degree from the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism as well as an MFA from Boston University. She lives in Brooklyn with her wife and cat.

Get a copy from Bookshop, Amazon, or from your local comic shop or bookstore.