Frankie Pickle is half chapter book and half graphic novel, a format that works well especially for its intended audience: young boys.  It’s a great balance between the comic book form and text and will appeal to both type of readers, those who need the visual and others who are more comfortable with text.  My initial reaction what that the book is heavy on the preachy side, “It’s better to have a clean room than a messy one.”  Looking back on it now I’m not as bothered and think that kids won’t even bat an eye over the storyline.  Who knows.  Every parent needs a little bit of subliminal messaging don’t they?  And the illustrations are entertaining.

A fun book for the young boy in your life.

What type of kid were you?  Could your room have been described as  a “closet of doom?”

Links of interest:  Book Dads has a great in-depth book review.  Eric Wight website.
Genre:  Juvenile Fiction/Graphic Novel approx ages 4-8
Publisher: Simon & Schuster. May 5, 2009.
Hardcover, 96 pages. ISBN: 1416964843
Frankie Pickle and the Closet of Doom is available from your local independent bookstore, Powell’s, and Amazon.

Each story is connected and flows together as the wolf is trying to desperately come up with his next meal.  This impeccably dressed wolf, just can’t seem to catch a break when he’s outwitted by the pigs, attacked by the sheep, and declothed by little red riding hood (who’s  better known as Rhonda).  Kids who are familiar with the original stories will love the new story twists and those who aren’t will fall in love with the illustrations.  In the chapter about the boy who cried wolf, I got a kick out of one of the townsfolk who came running each time the boy cried wolf in various states of getting dressed for the day.  In a towel straight out of the shower and next with a blow dryer.

There’s a Wolf at the Door is a great book to introduce young readers to the graphic novel format, fables, and the classic stories that we grew up with.  I haven’t tried reading it to my three year-old.  It is quite long with a decent amount of text.  I wouldn’t want to read the whole thing in one sitting as a bedtime story.  You’ll probably be there for awhile.  But the chapters make for good stopping points as long as you don’t wait to long to pick it back up again, or else children might not see how the stories are connected.  Overall, I enjoyed this new take on these classic tales.

R.W Alley website.

Emiko Superstar is all about coming of age and self-discovery.  Emi just isn’t happy with herself.  After being fired from her summer job working at a coffee shop, she’s now babysitting and in her words “What was about to be the crappiest summer – was flashing before my eyes.”  So even though her summer was “sucking the big one right now” it was really hard to complain because she got paid a lot and the baby was pretty cute.

Everything changes when she discovers an underground scene of performance artists known as The Freak Show.  She’s really hesitant to go and is so scared the first time she shows up that she literally runs away before she even reaches the door.  Everybody, is well, so strange.  So confident.  Not afraid to be themselves.  Total opposite of Emi.  Can Emi break through her hesitations and transform herself into somebody else?  And can she do it honestly and without hurting others along the way?  And in the end will it be worth it?

So the last lines of the book (yes! I’m giving you the very last lines) says:

It’s, you know, your kind of atypical summer adventure story.  It’s got a freak show, freaks performance art, a little larceny, a little family drama.  I guess it’s a story about love, although it’s difficult to say what love is in this story.  I guess it’s a story about how love isn’t always what it makes itself out to be, if that makes sense.  It’s a story about how true love is hard to find.  Mostly, it’s a story about me and how I became a Superstar, for a little while.  About meeting other Superstars.  Finding inspiration.  When I finish the story, this is where I’ll tell you to press “play” on your favorite song.  The song that makes you feel amazing and famous . . . even if you’re not.

If there is going to be more of Emi in any future books, I’ll definitely would love to hear the rest of her story.  I thought the story was really great, characters were all really interesting, and the illustrations were just how I like them in a graphic novel.  I’m surprised at how much I did enjoy this one.  For some reason, I didn’t think I would.  When I finished it, I don’t even think I would have said that.  But the more I look back on it, the more I like it.  And I say that probably because more than a month later, I can still remember most of Emiko Superstar pretty vividly.

Mariko Tamaki website and Steve Rolston website.

My three year old picked up this book a lot while I had it sitting around.  He liked the purple dinosaur and I think he may have even called him Barney.  But he’s not Barney, he’s Jellaby, a purple creature whom Portia has found out in the woods.  He’s lost and Portia takes him in.  It reminds me of Mary Had a Little Lamb because Jellaby follows Portia to school.   And she has a friend Jason who always wears orange (the only other color besides purple in the book).

So yeah.  It’s been at least a month since I read the book and to tell you the truth that’s about all I remember, so I’m not sure what that says.  I think young readers will probably like it.  My three year-old liked looking at the photos.

Chiggers is about a group of girls who go to summer camp.  It’s the same camp that Abby goes to every summer and she’s excited.  But her excitement ends when her friend Rose is to busy being a cabin assistant to hang out with her, her friends talk behind her back and everybody thinks that the cabinmate she gets along best with is annoying.  Throw in some lightening strikes, romantic love interest, and elfish daydreams and there you go.

Honestly, this graphic novel was confusing. I could not keep the characters straight and by the end of the book I still didn’t know who was talking (my children’s lit book club members all said the same thing).  I really didn’t care for the illustrations.  They would have been fine if only there wasn’t really ugly lines under all the characters eyes.  Case in point:  page 81 rhrough 85.  Yeah, I know they are supposed to be tired but still these panels ruined whatever redeeming qualities the other panels had.

I honestly don’t know what the appeal of Chiggers is to the actual intended audience, young adult girls, but this mama just didn’t get it.  And I even went to girl’s camp four years in a row as a teen.  What can I say, I just can’t like everything I read.

Hope Larson website.

Rapunzel’s Revenge is a great addition to children’s literature and the world of graphic novels (although I fully admit that I’m not familiar with the graphic novel world, but how can it not?!).  It was fun to read, had a lot of great one-liners, and had a great story.  Rapunzel isn’t just a poor, woe is me girl locked in a tower.  She’s sassy, witty, and can handle those lasso braids like no one you’ve seen.  I know Nathan Hale spent forever on those illustrations!!  I thought they were really nice but there were some panels that I thought could have been better.  I thought the faces got funny sometimes.  But it’s not enough to really bother me.  Overall, a fun book I’d totally recommend.

I went to the Rapunzel’s Round-Up, a fun book release party for Rapunzel’s Revenge.  See my commentary on that fun day here.  If you haven’t heard the story of how I ended up with Shannon’s garden zucchini, then you should check it out!

Shannon and Dean Hale were just on the today show.  Check out their fun segment:

Visit Shannon Hale’s website and Nathan Hale’s blog.

Coming right up (or at least today, we’ll see what I can do with the kiddo’s around) is a great Shannon Hale interview.  You won’t want to miss this one.  She answers your questions!

If you are not familiar with The Complete Maus (Maus I and Maus II), let me briefly fill you in.  It’s  told in alternating viewpoints between Art Spiegelman’s interviewing his father about his survival during the Holocaust in the present and the retelling of those experiences in the past.  It’s also very much about the relationship between Art and his father.  Art has a difficult time understanding his father.  Although the war is long over, it’s effects are still felt every day in their family.

The Complete Maus feels very much like a documentary, one that you would watch on film.  But it’s a memoir, and let’s not forget the most important part about this book:  it’s also a graphic novel.  Different nationalities are depicted as different animals.  The Jews are mice and the Germans are cats representing a evil cat and mouse game.  The Poles are pigs, the Americans are dogs, the French are pigs and so on.

The Complete Maus really surprised me.  I don’t know what I was expecting but I know it wasn’t the father-son relationship, but I liked it.  Art Spiegelman did a great job showing how difficult it was to get his father’s story and how stressful it was to share it with us.  It felt like a full circle story.

I was also surprised that all the animals actually looked like humans with the exception of their heads.  I guess I wasn’t expecting how realistic it was, I thought it would be more “animal-ish.”  After I had this thought, I did some Google searches and of course, fell upon Wikipedia.   There it states that all the animals are drawn alike, because ultimately Spiegelman was showing that all humans are alike and that it’s crazy to try to divide them by nationalistic, religious, or racial lines.  The depiction of animals does make it easier for the reader to digest given the grim topic.  I think it would be hard to read a graphic novel that showed humans being abused in the worst scenarios possible.

The only negative thing that I can say about it is . . . oh dear, do I dare say?  Yes, I do.  I actually thought that the illustrations were pretty awful.  It was hard for me to read nearly 300 pages when the illustrations were not dynamic enough for my tastes.  I guess I was expecting something amazing, the way people were raving about it.  I was disappointed.  Don’t expect anything spectacular.  I think the idea behind the illustrations and the text is what carries this book, not the illustrations themselves.

The Complete Maus is a good addition to Holocaust literature, and it certainly is a unique approach and if you have interest either in the Holocaust or graphic novels, you should give this one a try.  If you don’t have interest in either, it probably won’t be for you.

I have a confession to make. We Are On Our Own was the very first Graphic Memoir (or any type of graphic anything) that I’ve ever read (does Archie count?). There, it’s out in the open. I said it. We Are On Our Own is a amazing illustrated graphic memoir. By profession, Miriam Katin was a graphic artist and when sitting down to put her experiences about her childhood during WWII to paper, I suppose drawing it out just made sense. Too cool if you ask me.

With her father off fighting for the Hungarian army, Miriam Katin retells the story of her and her Mother leaving the comfort of their home and escaping on foot to avoid deportation. Miriam is small, probably about four or five and the story reflects how she viewed what was going on around her through the eyes of a child. She remembers the small things, her dog being taken away, the “nice man” who brings her chocolates, the snow, confusion over mommy crying, the tanks, being left alone while her mother went to the hospital. She also blends in the memories that she created when she later heard stories of what really happened, for example the search that her father undertook to find them and what her mother had to go through to keep them a few steps ahead of the Nazis.

From the book jacket:

We Are on Our Own is a woman’s attempt to rebuild her earliest childhood trauma in order to come to an understanding of her lifelong questioning of faith. Katin’s faith is shaken as she wonders how God could create and tolerate such a wretched world, a world of fear and hiding, bargaining and theft, betrayal and abuse. The complex and horrific experiences on the run are difficult for a child to understand, and as a child, Katin saw them with the simple longing, sadness, and curiosity she felt when her dog disappears or a stranger makes her mother cry.

The pencils illustrations were very stylistic, loose and told so much more of the story. I thought they were very well done.

Here is a short video with Miriam sharing a few of her thoughts about On Our Own:

If you’re like me, and like to read anything about WWII, On Our Own: A Memoir by Mariam Katin would be a good addition to your reading list.