Children's book reviews, all age comic books, Kidlit, mglit, movies, entertainment and parenting
Category: All Age Comic Books
This is a look at the new all age comics that are OK for young readers. Some of these comics are also great for any reader :) We’ll review some of them and provide as thorough a list of all the new titles coming out that Wednesday.
Reluctant readers, mainly talking to you boys in middle-elementary school through middle-middle school, hear me when I say this. I hear you when, through one manner or another, you say or infer that you don’t want to read. Cosmic Cadets (Book Two): Accused! is a graphic novel (a format that you love), is set on a ship in space (science-fiction!) and has a group of peers (kids your age) who are working together (a lesson that your teachers and parents will love). This is a younger-skewing all-age graphic novel that pays attention to the subject matter most graphic novels that age ignore.
This is a great comic book that I forgot I had read before, it’s what you might be thinking as you’re digging into The Avengers in The Veracity Trap!. The heroes on the book’s cover have their classic 60’s era appearance. Hulk’s pants are a deep-hued purple. Captain America has his wings on his cowl, evident for everyone to see. Iron Man’s mask is obvious, not melding into his suit and its colors are a very pure yellow and red. But the book’s format is larger than most graphic novels and the story breaks the fourth wall. This is an original graphic novel that old-school comic fans will embrace. It will also give next-generation fans a glimpse at seeing why these comics were so awesome, without worrying about damaging those golden age gems.
The Incredible Hulk is one of our top three superheroes. It’s the classic Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde tale, but with radiation and a couple of Avengers for good measure. All The Hulk Feels is an illustrated book. It’s an illustrated book that, through its paneled presentation, has the feel of a comic book. A comic book story a little sillier than one that you’d find on New Comic Book Day, but is equally, if not more entertaining.
When I was a teenager I loved the Marvel Team-Up comic books. Spoiler alert: I still love those comic books. It’s the thought of one cool superhero who might be slightly antagonistic, temporarily partnering with another one with complementary powers or an opposing personality. Iron Man: Something Strange is the young reader, graphic novel equivalent of those comic books. It’s the fourth in A Mighty Marvel Team-Up book series that seemingly has the goal of making reading fun and approachable to grades two through five.
Elementary school-aged boys don’t want to not read. I realize that’s a horrible sentence, but stay with me. Reluctant readers (mainly boys) in third through fifth grade know that they need to read, but don’t because they’re shy, distracted by technology, unable to, or simply read slower than other students. In school that second one doesn’t carry any weight because those ages aren’t going to school with a phone or an ironically named smart watch. The reluctant reader in elementary school has many great options for things that they can read on their schedule. These are the books that they need to bring with them for reading time and is something that they should want to read. Don’t Cause Trouble is a graphic novel like this.
Wimpy Kid is one of the 500-pound gorillas in children’s literature. It’s one of those book series that young readers feel they should read because their siblings read it, or because they’ve seen one of the dozens of entries in their library. Oliver’s Great Big Universe is cut from the same cloth as Wimpy Kid. Volcanoes Are Hot! is the second entry in this series and has placed STEM fun in the place of Wimpy Kid’s family antics. Yes, STEM-fun is a thing. Fart jokes are a natural crossover to volcanology and students avoiding bullies or hall monitors are essentially recreating Pangea on a localized scale. Oliver’s Great Big Universe: Volcanoes Are Hot! has the same degree of laughs as its simian cousin, in addition to the comic-style art and succinct text that keeps young readers locked in.
Locked in, while you can probably infer its definition, means that students focus and concentrate on the thing in front of them. They can be locked in on the study materials, locked in while they’re playing basketball or locked in to the book that they didn’t think that they’d enjoy reading. Upper elementary and middle school students will be locked in when they’re reading Oliver’s Great Big Universe: Volcanoes Are Hot!.
18 pages into the book we discover that Oliver’s friend, Sven, threw up at lunch because he ate too much cobbler, which he absolutely loves. The art shows a gaggle of students lining up to give him their cobbler, which evolves into an eating competition of sorts with the elementary school cafeteria egging him on with chants of “eat it, eat.” He’s looking sort of purple and is pushed into the puke aspect of the Venn Diagram when a classmate offers him a pickle that supposedly calms the stomach. Just like the volcano that has too much magma and pressure under it, Sven blows chunks and forever stains his formative years.
Thankfully middle school is just around the corner and incidents like that are quickly forgotten by this fickle age group. Alas, it’s not, and Olliver and Sven are forced to do other things to change their peer’s perception and hopefully put that puke into the memory hole. What brought on Olliver’s interest in volcanoes was his aunt, who appears very early in the book as a cavewoman. That’s the way she appears to him, but it’s just his active imagination because she is a volcanologist who has just spent 500 days living in a cave.
Volcanoes Are Hot is the book version of short-attention-span theater. It effortlessly entertains ages eight and up who had previously, and perhaps unconsciously, sworn off reading anything scientific for the sole purpose of entertainment. Some of those kids might have intentionally said that being the ‘smart one’ wasn’t possible or they simply bought into the fallacy that it’s cool not to be intelligent. This is for them, as well as, the kids who realize that it’s the people who don’t play the fool that will reap the rewards.
The joke-to-page ratio is something that we calculate in kidlit books. If there are multiple laughs on one page then the joke-to-page ratio is high and provides numerous reasons for young readers to stay with it. Volcanoes Are Hot! has a high joke-to-page ratio, as well as, incorporating science metaphors, STEM facts, and genuine laughs on every page. The bar for this graphic novel-eque book is high and it launches itself over each increment with aplomb. On some of the pages, the illustrations provide the laughter while others rely on its succinct and age-appropriate text to garner the giggles. When Oliver tries digging a hole to use the bathroom he realizes that it’s more challenging than expected. This causes him to “be pooped, as in tired, not like I pooped in my pants. Although honestly, it could have gone either way.” When you add some great cartoon illustrations next the already funny or ironic text it makes the book like butter to that movie popcorn that was already tasty.
There will be some elementary and middle school readers who would enjoy Oliver’s Great Big Universe: Volcanoes Are Hot!, but they’ll presume that because it’s educational that it possibly can’t be entertaining. It’s a pity that some readers will think that, because it’s not. This makes STEM accessible for those who might be scared of it, provides a humor tract for grin-less scientists, proves again the graphic novel-adverse adults that the genre is worth embracing, and gives kids a watercooler book that will up their science grade if they allow it to.
Oliver’s Great Big Universe: Volcanoes Are Hot! is by Jorge Cham and is available on Amulet Books, an imprint of Abrams Books.
The First Cat in Space and the Soup of Doom takes the absurd happenings of The First Cat in Space Ate Pizza, keeps running and picks up speed. The Batman 1966 vibes in this all-age graphic novel series continue in this second book and are more established. By looking at the back cover it baits audiences by telling them that they’ll see First Cat, Moon Queen, and Loz 4000 again, but teases them by showing snippets of the action inside the book, a la, The Wild, Wild West as they went to commercials. This is a graphic novel that wallows in the excitement and giddy energy that mid-elementary through lower middle-school students can bring to a book when it’s one whets their appetite.
That song from Mellencamp is so overplayed in the summer. Is it that terrestrial radio plays certain songs more during that time of year, or are you simply listening to the radio more? In other news, have you ever not had something because the other thing you consumed from that entity was so good? We eat at a pizza place like that. Their pizza is so great, but I’m hesitant to order other things off the menu out of fear that it wouldn’t measure up to the thing I already like from them. Nathan Hale has a pizza place, it’s called Hazardous Tales. They’re a series of non-fiction graphic novels that makes American history entertaining and allows upper-elementary through high school and older the chance to actually enjoy learning through reading. When I first saw The Mighty Bite from Nathan Hale I immediately knew it was from his kitchen, but I didn’t try any of it. The Mighty Bite: Walrus Brawl at the Mall! is the second entry in this series and proves that you need to try new things on the menu. Not only is Walrus Brawl at the Mall! a great graphic novel for fans of Hazardous Tales, it enters the all-age graphic novel smackdown and lays competition to Investigators and Dog Man.
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