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.
Somewhere between learning to read and reading to learn is when elementary-aged children discover graphic novels. Their manic energy, full-color attitude, and age-appropriate puns, make the great graphic novels ones that are shared and the stuff of kid water cooler magic. The eXpets is the first book in a new graphic novel series that takes aim at a younger-than-usual demographic and will please that audience to no end.
Which came first the chicken or the egg? That question is one that older readers might ponder after reading The Day the River Caught Fire. It’s the non-fiction story of how the Cuyahoga River in Cleveland, Ohio caught fire and led to the creation of Earth Day. We just got back from Hollywood Studios in Orlando where the water catching on fire was one of the standout elements in a nighttime show. It’s a simple effect that does a great job at making audiences impressed due to the issue that one can easily defeat the other. However, water, due to its nature, should not catch on fire, should it?
I know there’s a golf ball on the moon. I also know that there’s an American flag on the moon. What The Museum on the Moon taught me, among other things, is that the flag was mounted on a metal frame to make it appear that the wind was blowing on the moon, thus providing the illusion that it was flying. The book’s subtitle, The Curious Objects on the Lunar Surface, lets you in on the fact that these tidbits exist, and it does so in the most surprising of ways, via poetry.
Having taught a couple of classes to middle school grades about World War I, I know that the subject can be confusing. The time spent on WWI for most middle school classes is very brief, with more time allowed for the Treaty of Versailles, especially for those lower grades. Those ages know about the mythos of the flying ace, even if they get hazy on who were the Allied Forces and what were the causes that led to it. Above the Trenches is a graphic novel in the Nathan Tale’s Hazardous Tales series. This entry is specifically about the flying aces that took to the skies in WWI and how they came to shape this new form of combat. Ironically, the most famous WWI pilot, the Red Baron doesn’t factor into Above the Trenches that much. Instead, the graphic novel is about the Allied Powers and their build-up of the foreign legion and the men who jumped into this relatively new mode of transportation.
Elementary school-aged kids know Mo. Mo Willems’ picture books have a way of gleefully speaking to those young students. His style is immediate and can make them smile as they relax, make them think just a little bit, or it can do both. Are you Big? is Mo Willems at his thinking and relaxing best. At its smartest it’s a book about relative proportionality and thinking about the bigger picture that might contain variables that are outside of your influence. As its happiest and simplest, it’s a silly book with anthropomorphic weather systems, land masses and planets cavorting about a picture book that will do what books like this should do, make em smile.
The heel is what drives the narrative. It’s why you watch wrestling and a stronger heel will always make a book worth reading. The heel, or bad guy, can make a decent book highly enjoyable or transform a movie that’s just ok to one that is a waste of your time. The Bellwoods Game lays down the heel in short order and does so in a way that any kid who’s ever grown up in any neighborhood will relate to. It will bring back memories of their childhood in an upper-elementary, mglit package that delivers the chills without skimping on the relationships.
It would be easy to say that Star Trek Prodigy: Escape Route can only be enjoyed by Trekkies. While they will certainly latch on the book the easiest of those who could enjoy it, Escape Route will also entertain upper-elementary through middle school readers who want a straightforward science-fiction tale. You don’t need to know the Star Trek Prodigy characters in order to enjoy the book. If anything, the fact that it can be enjoyed by anyone, and not just fans of the legacy characters, exemplifies that space is a huge area that can enjoyed by anyone. It’s also that point that frustrates fans of other intellectual properties who seem to think that only one family has the ability to produce stories that people want to see.
Vern, custodian of the Universe is the strangest, most creative and surreal graphic novel since Neurocomic. It also echoes the sentiment from the classic Peggy Lee song, “Is that All There Is?”, and parallels to Janet Jackson’s “What Have You Done For Me Lately”, which was certainly more about relationships, but could be extrapolated to a greater sense. Vern deals with the multiverse, and before you dismiss this smart graphic novel as merely jumping on the bandwagon that movies have mercilessly pounded into the ground, hear me out. This graphic novel accomplishes readers getting interested in it by successfully and entertainingly melding so many areas of a science-fiction venn diagram some readers might not know what to focus on. They’ll come for the trope of the multiverse, but get sucked into the art, check it out for the art, but then dig deeper into the STEM or one of any other possible paths.
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