A Blurmp in Time (Catwad’s Friend Blurmp #1) is kind of like Catwad, but with more fart jokes. No, that’s not it. A Blurmp in Time is about everything and nothing, and succeeds on both fronts. That’s not it either.A Blurmp in Time is not entirely devoted of fart jokes. There is one moment where Blurmp saves his friend’s bacon by passing gas; but enough about breakfast meat. Let’s back up for just a moment. Blurmp is Catwad’s best friend, inasmuch as a grumpy cat who doesn’t like anything can have something it likes.
Catwad is the titular character in the graphic novel series by Jim Benton. This graphic novel series is one that elementary school-age students know and love. It sits alongside Dog Man as a graphic novel that those ages instinctively know to read. They walk, learn to ride a bicycle, draw crude illustrations of their teachers, read Catwad, then Dog Man. While there are other things in the life cycle of an elementary school student, those are the top five.
Blurmp often usurps Catwad in his own books. The comic well-meaning foible to the grumpy Gus is always in a good mood, and never sees the bad side of things. That’s not a bad way to be is it? This is especially true in A Blurmp in Time (Catwad’s Friend Blurmp #1), when he makes a time machine from a box found in the garbage. Blurmp simply writes “Time masheen”, with the “E” in time backwards on his trash treasure, and invites Catwad to take a trip with him.
Catwad thankfully refuses, hears a strange sound and turns around to see burn marks where Blurmp’s garbage box used to be. Blurmp is hurtling through time in a very self-aware way. He’s turning over and over and sees the words 18th or 19th Century Italy, which gives him a clue as to when and where he’s going. Once he lands, Blurmp goes into a bakery where due to his clumsiness, he invents pizza. The baker wonders if this flat bread snack will be as delicious without the cat butt.
Blurmp continues traveling through time and space. He goes to visit ancient Egyptians where he uses toilet paper to help them create mummies. He visits the near future to find out why zombies have stomachaches. He momentarily boards a pirate ship before meeting some really strange mermaids. In the times of dinosaurs he wishes on a shooting star, before jumping into his time machine.
In the distant future he meets some advanced species and robots. They’re infuriated by his stupidity and ban time travel, but send him home so that they don’t have to be around him. When he gets back to the present day Catwad hasn’t even noticed that he was gone. A Blurmp in Time ends in a way that you wouldn’t expect, which is saying a lot for a graphic novel whose story goes through time and space.
The laugh-to-page ratio in A Blurmp in Time is almost impossible to compete with. There are a couple of pages where there’s only one laugh. In most of those cases it’s where there’s one big illustration that’s taking up the entire page. To clarify, when we say ‘laugh-to-page’ ratio, we mean an instance where you grin, laugh out loud, or smirk at some text or illustration on the page. The laugh-to-page ratio in this case is 4:1, or four laughs to each page. This calculation is purely subjective, but is someone manages to monetize it please cut me in for a percentage, like 10:1.
The dry humor in Blurmp, much like Catwad, is everywhere and might take a moment to register with some younger audiences. There’s one especially wry text example when Blurmp has been shrunken to the size where he’s exploring his own body. When he gets back in his time machine he’s thankful that he spelled “but” correctly. There are so many jokes in A Blurmp in Time that even older readers might not catch all of them the first time.
The illustrations in Blurmp will keep younger readers coming back to the graphic novel. It has gross moments of humor, but they’re not too disgusting, inappropriate or numerous to be offensive to adults. This is the book form manna from heaven that elementary school kids (mainly boys…) are looking for. Reluctant reader boys love graphic novels, and that’s OK. Sure you want your students or kids reading Macbeth, The Lord of the Rings or even Twilight, but they’ve got to start somewhere. In a decade or two it’s possible they’ll still be reading graphic novels. They might even laugh at a time traveling cat who thinks that trash collectors rummage through garbage to find all of the good stuff. And if they do, they’ll have lots of company from adults who learned to love to read from a naïve, but kind feline, and his grumpy friend.
A Blurmp in Time (Catwad’s Friend Blurmp #1) is from Jim Benton and available on Graphix, an imprint of Scholastic.
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