The jokes are funnier than in volume one, but readers may wish there were more space between them.
This graphic novel is an epic at the speed of a flipbook.
Stick figures are easy to draw. Even when hundreds of soldiers are massed around the city of Sticatha, they’re all just circles and lines. The Stickman Odyssey books seem to be based around an obvious joke: Epic quests and fervent romances are acted out by characters with dots for eyes. That would explain the hectic pace. If the adventures are never more serious than a Warner Brothers cartoon, that's OK. Zozimos can be fighting a giant boar god on one page, then wandering the desert, then—somehow—turn into a goat. But this book has actual themes: Zozimos has to learn to control his anger and balance his desires for peace and war. And stick figures aren’t good with themes. Their little dotted eyes can convey only so much emotion. The nuances might come through if Ford slowed down the action from time to time. There’s a late scene where two characters, sailing a warship across the ocean, just stop and talk about their love lives. It’s a touching moment, one of the few in the book. Thrilling as the story is, when Zozimos says, “There’s always another adventure!” it begins to sound like a bit of a threat.
The jokes are funnier than in volume one, but readers may wish there were more space between them. (Graphic adventure. 11-14)Pub Date: May 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-399-25427-7
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Philomel
Review Posted Online: March 20, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
It’s the haunting details of those around Kai that readers will remember.
Kai’s life is upended when his coastal village is devastated in Japan’s 2011 earthquake and tsunami in this verse novel from an author who experienced them firsthand.
With his single mother, her parents, and his friend Ryu among the thousands missing or dead, biracial Kai, 17, is dazed and disoriented. His friend Shin’s supportive, but his intact family reminds Kai, whose American dad has been out of touch for years, of his loss. Kai’s isolation is amplified by his uncertain cultural status. Playing soccer and his growing friendship with shy Keiko barely lessen his despair. Then he’s invited to join a group of Japanese teens traveling to New York to meet others who as teenagers lost parents in the 9/11 attacks a decade earlier. Though at first reluctant, Kai agrees to go and, in the process, begins to imagine a future. Like graphic novels, today’s spare novels in verse (the subgenre concerning disasters especially) are significantly shaped by what’s left out. Lacking art’s visceral power to grab attention, verse novels may—as here—feel sparsely plotted with underdeveloped characters portrayed from a distance in elegiac monotone. Kai’s a generic figure, a coat hanger for the disaster’s main event, his victories mostly unearned; in striking contrast, his rural Japanese community and how they endure catastrophe and overwhelming losses—what they do and don’t do for one another, comforts they miss, kindnesses they value—spring to life.
It’s the haunting details of those around Kai that readers will remember. (author preface, afterword) (Verse fiction. 12-14)Pub Date: Jan. 12, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-553-53474-0
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Sept. 15, 2015
Well-educated American boys from privileged families have abundant options for college and career. For Chiko, their Burmese counterpart, there are no good choices. There is never enough to eat, and his family lives in constant fear of the military regime that has imprisoned Chiko’s physician father. Soon Chiko is commandeered by the army, trained to hunt down members of the Karenni ethnic minority. Tai, another “recruit,” uses his streetwise survival skills to help them both survive. Meanwhile, Tu Reh, a Karenni youth whose village was torched by the Burmese Army, has been chosen for his first military mission in his people’s resistance movement. How the boys meet and what comes of it is the crux of this multi-voiced novel. While Perkins doesn’t sugarcoat her subject—coming of age in a brutal, fascistic society—this is a gentle story with a lot of heart, suitable for younger readers than the subject matter might suggest. It answers the question, “What is it like to be a child soldier?” clearly, but with hope. (author’s note, historical note) (Fiction. 11-14)
Pub Date: July 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-58089-328-2
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Charlesbridge
Review Posted Online: May 31, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2010
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