A highflying mythological memoir alight with joie de vivre.
Gerstein follows up I Am Pan! (2016) with an account of the pranks and exploits of the goat-footed god’s equally free-spirited father.
Bursting with self-confidence, golden from helmet to winged sandals, and, on the cover at least, sprayed with sparkles, Hermes literally outshines a multihued, caricatured supporting cast of gods, demigods, mortals, and monsters parading through the loosely drawn sequential panels. The boasting begins with his birth, first word (“GIMME!”), and—still but 1 day old—invention of the lyre from a tortoise shell and theft of Apollo’s cattle by turning their hooves around so they can’t be tracked. Charming his way out of punishment (and leaving Apollo happily strumming a cowboy song on the lyre), he goes on as messenger of the gods to hoodwink the nasty twin giants Otus and Ephialtes, become a father and a grandfather, rescue Hera’s friend Io from the monster Argus (a knobbly, pitch-black boojum studded with eyes), bestow on Aesop the art of telling fables, and, as the other gods fade into retirement, ultimately find a bright new outlet for his particular talents: “The Internet!” It’s a selective account, with all of Hermes’ amorous adventures except the wooing of Penelopeta (Pan’s mom) skipped over and the violence of the author’s classical source material dialed down enough to, for instance, leave Argus alive and the giants not slaughtered but tricked into a permanent bout of arm-wrestling. Admitting in a closing note to a bit of embellishment (no kidding), Gerstein caps this rollicking revel with a short but scholarly resource list.
A highflying mythological memoir alight with joie de vivre. (Mythology. 7-11)Pub Date: April 16, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-8234-3942-3
Page Count: 72
Publisher: Holiday House
Review Posted Online: Jan. 27, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A fresh and interesting adaptation, making for an easy crowd pleaser.
A popular prose series gets a graphic revitalization.
Faithfully following its predecessor, the book introduces readers to 10-year-old George, an American boy traveling first class on the Titanic with his aunt Daisy and little sister, Phoebe. When the fateful collision between boat and berg occurs, Phoebe goes missing. As the arctic waters rise, George sets out to find her. Although panic mounts all around, it seems that George’s privilege will save him, until he is shocked to discover otherwise. After the Titanic goes down and he’s safe back at home, George wrestles with his anxieties in a way that is accessibly age-appropriate, albeit a bit facile. In the vein of other graphic adaptations of bestselling series (like the evergreen The Baby Sitter’s Club), the first installment of Tarshis’ sprawling prose disaster oeuvre for young readers is reimagined in visually interesting full-color comic panels that support its recognizable thrilling pace and convenient twists. Many of the most exciting scenes are largely wordless, spotlighting the propulsive action amid growing tensions. New backmatter includes interesting historical facts and photographs of persons and places of interest, including pictures of the first-, second-, and third-class cabins and of relics recovered from the shipwreck. Also included are lists of further reading, both fiction and nonfiction. George, Phoebe, and Daisy are white, as are nearly all the secondary characters as well.
A fresh and interesting adaptation, making for an easy crowd pleaser. (facts, character bios, bibliographies) (Graphic adaptation. 7-10)Pub Date: Feb. 4, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-338-12092-9
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Graphix/Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Oct. 12, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Formulaic but rousingly gruesome in some spots and thought-provoking in others.
A child mourning the loss of her mom “bears” witness to the consequences of strewing the natural landscape with garbage.
In this graphic-novel adaptation of a 2018 entry in Tarshis’ long-running I Survived series—in which invented storylines are layered over historical incidents—it’s 1967, and Mel (Vega in the original, though her last name is never mentioned here) has reluctantly agreed to continue a family tradition in the wake of her mother’s death by visiting her grandpa in Montana’s Glacier National Park. She is terrified when a bear attacks the cabin door one night. Later, she and Cassie, a writer friend of her mom’s, meet up with a researcher whose own father had been bloodily killed in an earlier attack and discover that a local resort has been dumping garbage nearby to draw bears for a nightly show that people, including even park rangers, avidly gather to watch. That evening, in a narrow escape that is also put to use as an opening teaser, Mel herself is savagely wounded. Two deaths that occurred in real life that summer, plus the shooting of the bears involved (talk about blaming the victims!), happen offstage, but the live and dead bears in Pekmezci’s neatly drawn wilderness scenes look feral enough to have readers attending closely to the safety guidelines in the backmatter—and understanding the dangers of letting wild animals become dependent on our detritus. Like others in the series, this one follows a predictable trajectory, but readers should find it absorbing. Mel is brown-skinned, Cassie appears to be Black, and the researcher is light-skinned.
Formulaic but rousingly gruesome in some spots and thought-provoking in others. (afterword, photos, timeline, resource lists) (Graphic novel. 9-11)Pub Date: May 3, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-338-76691-2
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Graphix/Scholastic
Review Posted Online: April 12, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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