Children's book reviews, all age comic books, Kidlit, mglit, movies, entertainment and parenting
These are books that kids will want to read-or should read, but will enjoy doing so. Board book, picture books, kid lit, elementary school books, middle school books, high school books, all age comic books and more will be talked about here.
From a story about gems to a fabled opus on friendship, growing up, to its being a beacon in the LGBTQ world, imagination, creativity and so much more. When I first started watching Steven Universe it was all about the gems, earnest characters, and, to an extent the songs. After reading Steven Universe: End of an Era, I now know that it had much more in common with How I Met Your Mother than I ever knew.
If the middle school mind could be accessed as easily as a filing cabinet then you’d see files on everything that’s represented in Elvin Link, Please Report to the Principal’s Office by Drew Dernavich in there. There’d be a file on doodling, hanging out with your best friend, a conspiracy theory file (that also includes parents), a large folder on school issues like acquaintances/bullies, and many other files that get changed or moved to the front as they get older. Elvin Link captures that middle-school essence in the best and sweetest of all possible ways.
Is losing one’s tooth a time to panic or a rite of passage? How someone answers that might depend on how old they are and whether or not they’re a vampire. I mean, what if the very definition of what embodies you (or at least, what you think embodies you) were to change? In I Love My Fangs! the specific change that’s being referenced is one that every adult experienced 20 times. The first couple of times might have been traumatic, but after that, it was all gravy and tooth fairy expectations.
Alien Superstar was one of the best middle-school books of 2019. It crackled with humor, action, and a carefree vibe that ages 9 and up want to experience. Buddy Burger is the titular alien in the book. He’s escaped his home planet because there was an uprising happening that wasn’t bringing the best of the planet to the forefront. His grandmother put him in a ship and sent him to Earth where he crashed onto the backlot of a theme park that also does television production. From here his actual alien form allowed him to be the perfect ‘costumed’ performer on a hit show. It also helped that his costume, Zane Tracy, which is his human form, is a very cute teenage boy. In Alien Superstar Lights, Camera, Danger! Buddy is back and elements from his past are here too. Are they on his side or have they been an evil squadron?
The Scary Book is a delightfully, age-appropriate scary-silly book with pop-up elements. As an adult, I loved reading this. If my kids were young enough to enjoy the fact that I was reading a book to them, they’d love this. What’s surprising about The Scary Book is the creatures really do have an edge, despite all of its silliness. All but one of the animals has a mouth that’s printed on folded cardboard paper that folds out. This gives the illusion that the animal’s mouths are much bigger than they actually are, much like those folded pages in the back of Mad Magazine do.
One of our favorite books from 2019 was Creepy and True Mummies Exposed! Certainly, a major part of my initial curiosity in that book was the fact that I’ve loved mummies, the science of them, cultures that perfected them, and the ghoulish specter that exists inside my imagination of seeing them. The layout and presentation that book was perfect because it blended science, travel, adventure, and imagination into one package that was great for middle school readers and up. Author Kerrie Logan Hollihan dives into the series again with Creepy and True Ghosts Unveiled! It has the same presentation that I loved in the first book but looks at a topic that is difficult to actually prove.
“It’s like a poetry book about animals, mountains and the things that live in the mountains”, our 10-year-old said when he read World of Wonder Mountains. Well, to an extent he is correct in that upper-elementary school overview. The first page he turned to was one of the more poetic pages. It’s about the snow lion and spotlights her massive paws as they maw the snowy crags in some of the impossibly high mountains. It could be viewed as poetry. You could also see it as a snippet into what happens in that spot, at that particular moment to that certain animal.
Until a couple of years ago, I easily confused a mnemonic device with onomatopoeias. Shortly after doing this I’d flip flop my stance on both of them and reminisce about Johnny Mnemonic, the lovably cheesy film from 1995. Fun fact: that film takes place in 2021. After teaching onomatopoeias to a handful of Chinese students online, as well as incorporating that into my science lessons at school-BAM, I’ll never forget what they are. Sounds All Around takes a global look at these words that sound like what they are, and in turn, has created an entirely new genre of graphic novels.
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