“Woohoo. Treasure Island, here we come!” So crows young Jim Hawkins in this notably lame and jumbled graphic adaptation of Stevenson’s classic. Crowding variously sized panels and sometimes-misplaced dialogue balloons atop one another, Kohlrus illustrates the tale with jumbles of generally static figures in ragged (but apparently freshly laundered) clothing and scenes of hard-to-follow action. The sound-bite dialogue is largely incidental to Jim’s severely truncated narrative, which is broken up into multiple captions on every page, includes unnecessary footnotes (“The Dry Tortugas are a small group of islands in the Gulf of Mexico”) and gives the whole outing a feeling of being told rather than shown. No competition for the robust adaptations of Tim Hamilton (2005) or Roy Thomas (2008), nor does it measure up to the standards set by the same publisher’s adaptation of Moby Dick, adapted by Lance Stahlberg and illustrated by Lalit Kumar Singh (ISBN: 978-93-80028-22-4). (Graphic fiction. 11-13)
Pub Date: July 6, 2010
ISBN: 978-93-80028-21-7
Page Count: 88
Publisher: Campfire
Review Posted Online: June 3, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2010
Opening episodes of a comic-book series created by an American teacher in Japan take a leap into chapter-book format, with only partial success. Resembling—in occasional illustrations—a button-eyed, juvenile Olive Oyl, Akiko, 10, is persuaded by a pair of aliens named Bip and Bop to climb out her high-rise bedroom’s window for a trip to M&M-shaped Planet Smoo, where Prince Fropstoppit has been kidnapped by widely feared villainness Alia Rellaport. Along with an assortment of contentious sidekicks, including brainy Mr. Beeba, Akiko battles Sky Pirates and video-game-style monsters in prolonged scenes of cartoony violence, displaying resilience, courage, and leadership ability, but not getting very far in her rescue attempt; in fact, the story cuts off so abruptly, with so little of the quest completed, and at a lull in the action to boot, that readers expecting a self-contained (forget complete) story are likely to feel cheated. (Fiction. 10-12)
Pub Date: Feb. 8, 2000
ISBN: 0-385-32724-2
Page Count: 162
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 1999
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Manga with a heavy dose of cute, this debut introduces a shy teenager who is transformed into a reckless heroine by a bicycle with unusual properties. Just a day or so after Aki come across an old bike in the garage that—with a mighty FWOOOOSH—changes her school uniform to high boots, a short dress and a snazzy helmet, a gang of masked bicyclists embarks on a crime spree. Somehow managing to overcome her reluctance, off Aki pedals to do battle. Outfitting her lissome young daredevil with a hot boyfriend/sidekick, a cheery kimono-clad Grandfather to fill in the back story and a “Spirit Bike” with a front fender that turns into a giant snake at need, a toy elephant’s head on the handlebars and the ability to zoom along at super speed, the author propels the tale through many sudden jumps and inset-crammed pages to a climactic race, the dismaying revelation that the gang’s leader is a member of her own family and a juicy closing clinch with the aforementioned sidekick. Bound on the left edge rather than the right, but otherwise indistinguishable from its imported cousins, this should find a ready crowd of action-oriented shojo fans. (Graphic novel. 11-13)
Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-7868-3676-8
Page Count: 112
Publisher: Hyperion
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2006
BOOK REVIEW
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