We’ve been reading a lot of graphics lately.  This has a lot to do with the fact that I keep bringing them home, because it’s what I want to read…but they love them, too.  Here are a couple from this past week:

Frank Cammuso.  Otto’s Orange Day.  Illustrated by Jay Lynch.   RAW Junior, 2008.  40 pages.  Age 4 to 8.

You’ve got to love Toon Books for bringing the love of comics to a young audience.  Because they’re written for emerging readers, plot and language are simple and straightforward, but they also introduce the literary elements of panels and speech bubbles.  Geeks say yay!

Otto’s Orange Day has three acts, or “chapters.” ^[1]  First, the indroduction:  we meet Otto and his love of orange; he meets a genie, and wishes for everything to be orange.  Second, the conflict:  Otto realizes his mistake (orange lamb chops?  orange hued traffic lights?) and calls Aunt Sally Lee for help.  Third, the resolution:  a lack of specificity turns the world blue briefly, but a pizza delivery saves the day, as it often does.  Cute, fun, simple story.

James Kochalka.  Johnny Boo, Volume 1:  The Best Little Ghost in the World.  Top Shelf, 2008.  40 pages.  Age 4 to 8.

You look at Johnny Boo, you see his fabulous hair and his gleeful expression, and you can’t help but think how cute he is.  You open the book, you see his even smaller ghost pal Squiggle, and you are so overwhelmed by cuteness of his “squiggle power” that rainbows spew from your orifices.  The book’s cuteness factor waxes just shy of saccarine.  They meet the ice cream monster (that’s his hand on the cover) and it’s all fun and games until someone get ingested.  Bodily functions save the day, but you’ll have to read the book to find out which one(s)!

While that’s easily the most disturbing review I’ve ever written, it was a book that both girls and I enjoyed and recommend.

^[1]  More suitably expressed using “air quotes.”

The wait is over, and it does not disappoint.

Kean Soo.  Jellaby, Volume 2: Monster in the City.  Hyperion Books for Children, 2009.  172 pages.  Age 8 to 12.

Summary – The continuing story of Portia, Jason, and Jellaby.  They’re off to find Jellaby’s roots, but end up finding a new foe.  A ruckus ensues.

Kudos – Since we already know the characters, we get to step right into the action, which is steady.  And I lost track of the number of ways emotion is conveyed nonverbally.  Lots.  Awesome.

Kudon’ts – I don’t think the whole thing with the birds is properly explained.  It’s what I found most intriguing about volume 1, and thought there would be more to it.

Points –

• +15 for a satisfactory conclusion
• +5 for a Horton Hatches the Egg reprise
• -2 for the character name that sounds like a sugar-free gum ingredient
• +50 for all the grape-hued images you can eat ^[1]
• +100 for that head:body ratio that (to be generous) places the young characters’ ages at about 2 years

Quotable –

[ Jason and Jellaby are perched on some sort of pipe, hiding.  The pipe starts to break. ]

Jason:  (whispering)  Be lighter!  Be lighter!

[ Jellaby flaps his wings furiously. ]

Jason:  (still whispering)  It’s working!

Crack!  Wauugh!  Ooof!  (p. 149-150)

Reviews of Volume 1 – 100 Scope Notes | Charlotte’s Library | A Fuse #8 Production | Good Comics for Kids

EDIT:  The giveaway happened.  Congrats to my winner.

[1]  Yeah, sorry about that, but my original verb was “stomach,” and that sounded too negative.  Also, I can’t tell you how much I wanted to use the word “grapescale”…but since there are only two shades, it would have been completely inaccurate.

Gross title, but a pleasant and accurate portrayal of summer camp, the ups and downs of friendship, and young love.

Hope Larson.  Chiggers.  Antheneum Books for Young Readers, 2008.  170 pages.  Age 10 to 14.

Summer camp, because it is a completely contained social situation, is the perfect arena to explore the waxing and waning and various facets of friendship.  Yet, my first read-through, the word “nondescript” came to mind a number of times.  It took me half the novel before I could easily distinguish between the characters, and had to rely on cues like the number of piercings or presence of freckles (although, after paying more attention in my second reading, I found it hard to believe that I missed how the main character, Abby, frequently sports an adorable Holly Hunter-shaped mouth).  After a third go, I’ve decided to read everything Hope Larson has ever written.

The story is fine.  Believability is only strained when Abby gushes over what a great DM boy-of-interest must be.  Love is a 20-sided die?  I kid, but there are frequent doses of nerdiness, during which characters sport elf ears.  My favorite panels pull the characters out of their immediate physical context.  In one panel, Abby sprouts wings and is surrounded by fantasy creatures under a raincloud of uncool..ness.  In others, there are giant question marks or flying exam papers.  I also like how shared silences are drawn as elipsis-filled thought boxes.  The little things add up here.

Now, I’m not the type who’d scream at or run from your average bug, but anything that reportedly burrows in the unholiest of places is distressing.  The upshot?  As one character explains the trombicula alfreddugesi (chigger) to the others, she is shown wearing lab goggles that make her look sciency.  (Well, I think “sciency” is a good word for it, since the explanation is scientifically inaccurate.)  The story breaks for other educational moments, where the reader learns how to make a proper friendship bracelet or play Egyptian rat screw, but not at the expense of narrative flow.

You can read the another story featuring Abby, at Hope Larson’s website.

other reviews:
Comics in the Classroom | A Fuse #8 Production

Madeleine Rosca.  Hollow Fields, Volume 1.  Seven Seas Entertainment, 2007.  192 pages.  Age 9 to 14.

Lucy Snow gets to take cross-species transplantation, grave robbing, and basic killer robot construction in a single semester.  Sound lucky?  It’s just the standard fifth grade curriculum at Hollow Fields, a steampunk boarding school for the “scientifically gifted and ethically unfettered.”

Lucy was meant to go to a different boarding school, but ends up at Hollow Fields due to events of the it-was-a-dark-and-stormy-night variety.  Lured in by promises of free tuition and a private bath, she thoughtlessly signs a contract that prohibits her from leaving school property until she graduates.  Thanks to Simon, the only friendly face among her peers, she learns that everyone at Hollow Fields “comes from families involved in the forbidden sciences” such as “biological warfare, unethical genetics, creation of giant transforming robot weaponry” and the likes.

Simon also offers an explanation of the faculty’s highly visible seams:  “Some kids say they’re so old that their bodies have started to fall apart…so they have to keep stitching themselves back up…”  In particular, Miss Weaver, who runs the school, looks like she suffered an augmentation performed by a hack.  As if they weren’t scary enough, there’s another reason not to get too close—they’re venting steam out of their backs.  There is one fully-living creature among them.  His name is Stinch, and he was created by Miss Weaver as a pet and/or security guard.  He resembles Oogie Boogie (from The Nightmare before Christmas) down to the demeanor, except Stinch sports a stylin’ mohawk.

Things change for Lucy after Simon is punished for bad grades and gets hauled off for “detention,” which is some sort of euphemism, but no one knows what for.  One student per week is given this punishment, taken to the windmill, and never heard from again.  Duhn-duhn-duhnnnn.  Already behind in her studies, Lucy will be working her tuches off to stay alive, but she’s also motivated to learn more about the inner workings of Hollow Fields, especially after losing her only almost-friend.  I am betting in future installments (two of which have already been published) she’ll be unraveling some highly intriguing mysteries.  I absolutely loved this, and can’t wait to read the rest.

The first three chapters of volume 1 are available online.  The art is better in the print copies, but go read it anyway.

other reviews:
Graphic Novel Reporter | PopCultureShock

Akira Himekawa.  The Legend of Zelda:  Ocarina of Time, Part 1.  VIZ Media, 2008.  191 pages.  Age 8 to 12.

Let’s face it:  There’s no point in reading a Zelda manga adaptation without, at the very least, humming some video game theme music in your head.  By extension, there’s no point in reading this review without said music.  I recommend queuing up something from Zelda Reorchestrated before continuing.

In an author’s note, the two women who collaborated to create author/artist pseudonym Akira Himekawa (who have apparently created a number of Zelda graphic novelizations) say, “There are hardly ever any main characters that are so strong, cool and kind [as Link]!”  I don’t know about that, but the mythology of the Zelda games is genuinely good storytelling.  There are details that fail to reconcile from story to story, game to game, and yet there are fans (I among them) of the series as a whole, the sum of all its disparate parts.  There are single-Link theories, multi-Link theories, legends-are-inherently-inconsistent theories, and split-timeline theories.  Ocarina starts with Link as a child, making it a (if not the) genesis story.

I never played Ocarina because, well, I never got the hang of 3D video games.  There, I said it.  Regardless, I can tell this follows the story closely, down to the “ta-da” sound we should be hearing whenever Link gets a new item (or, in this case, the four note chromatic “da-na-na-naaah!”)  “You can use it to get fruit that’s too high up in the trees to reach.”  Yeah, or poke your first boss’s eye out.  I actually started to wonder if I was reading a dramatized, surface-level hint guide, with lines like, “Gohma’s weakness is her eyeball!  Aim for her eye!”  The only parts of this adaptation that were decidedly not like a video game were the times when boss-level bad guys were dealt with in single blows.  My thumb callouses beg to differ.

This is only the first half of the Ocarina of Time story, and at least four more stories are forthcoming.

other reviews:
Good Comics for Kids

Flight Explorer, Volume 1.  Edited by Kazu Kibuishi.  Villard, 2008.  112 pages.  Age 7 to 12.

Flight Explorer might be described as an anthology or a sampler.  It has ten graphic shorts from different artists.  The content is fun and benign.  Well, excepting that Jake Parker’s Missile Mouse says “crap”—gasp!—twice.  I love that he does.  I think that crap should be decriminalized slang.

Highlights:

• “Copper:  Mushroom Crossing” by Kazu Kibuishi
  

  After less than 15 seconds of dialog:

  “We’ve spent way too much time talking about it, we’d be stupid not to [jump across some mushrooms, Super Mario style, rather than take the bridge]!”

  Fred falls between the caps and is given the whatfor by some cranky stems.  By the way, I love this duo because the person has the dog name (Copper) and the dog has the person name (Fred).  Read more Copper here.

• “Zita the Spacegirl:  If Wishes Were Socks” by Ben Hatke
  

  Zita:  (looking at a sock)  So, I wonder how this thing works?

  Robot Randy:  It looks complicated.

  Zita and her two robot friends, without fully realizing it, wish for companions like themselves.  Either something gets lost in translation, or their mirror is rather unflattering.

• “Wooden Rivers:  Rain Slickers” by Rad Sechrist – A rotund meteorologist cat saves the day, wardrobe-wise, and puts a couple of buffoons in their places.
• “Snow Cap:  2nd Verse” by Matthew Armstrong – A wordless vignette about a girl and her beast.  As one might suspect from a Wild Thing, it’s not quite up on its etiquette, and accidentally swallows the girl; however, intentions were good, and amends are made.

other reviews:
All Ages Reads | Big A little a | Good Comics for Kids | Shelf Elf

Sara Varon.  Robot Dreams.  First Second, 2007.  208 pages.  All ages.

Dog meets robot.  Dog loves robot.  Robot loves dog.  Then tin meets salt water, and the relationship’s sustainability factor immediately plummets.  Dog, having no choice but to move on, experiences several cycles of friendship and loss.  Robot, rusted and immobilized, relies on dreams and fantasy, and experiences what could have been.  If clouds had arms and flowers could walk, that is.

I wouldn’t say that the book is wordless, exactly, but there is neither narration nor dialog.  The illustrations are simple, as are the events that transpire, leaving room for interpretation of the significance of its themes and the emotions at play.  I found myself reminded of The Snowman by Raymond Briggs, as the only paneled, wordless story I read as a kid—not to mention the melted snowman.  I’m not sure if the reader is meant to make this connection, or if the snowman was chosen simply to reflect the seasonal changes that are integral to the story.  Either way, this is not Varon’s first melted snowman.

I think this book is appropriate for all ages.  There are some things that younger audiences may miss, sure, but that’s true of anything, really.  As an experiment, I’m going to give it to my five-going-on-six year old and see what happens.  I think I might intervene at the rusting-up part, because it’s drawn pretty subtly, and I don’t want dog’s abandonment of robot to seem heartless.  Other than that I think she can handle it.

also reviewed at:
100 Scope Notes | emilyreads | A Fuse #8 Production | Miss Erin | Shelf Elf