While flossing, Stone Rabbit discovers a bottomless pit of doom in his bathroom floor—one more reason to hate Mondays. He’s sucked into the hole and through a time vortex of laughing clocks that dumps him in a T. Rex nest. He escapes several herds of dinos only to find himself mistaken for a god by a tribe of stone-age bunnies. When their village is destroyed and the population captured by a high-tech Cro-Magnon named Willie, Stone Rabbit comes to the rescue (reluctantly). In gratitude, they find a way to send him home. Author of 2006’s Manga Claus and a web-comic (for older people) also starring Stone Rabbit, Craddock’s first graphic outing for children is Saturday-morning cartoons all over again—bright, full-color, googly-eyed adventures that zip by in a rush of nonsensical fun. Readers will be re-readers, and they’ll want volume two, Pirate Palooza (ISBN: 978-0-375-85660-0; PLB: 978-0-375-95660-7), out the same day. Best get both. (Graphic fiction. 7-10)
Pub Date: Jan. 13, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-375-84360-0
Page Count: 96
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2008
BOOK REVIEW
More evidence that Squish is anything but a Wimpy Kid, for all his diminutive size.
Summer swim camp and a reckless new friend test a young amoeba’s courage and moral compass alike.
Squish has been left to face the scary pool alone because his buddies Peggy and Pod have gone to ballet camp. He is delighted to meet Basil, an equally water-averse hydra with the same taste in comics (which is to say, Super Amoeba) and the cool ability to detach portions of his body. But Basil also sports stingers at the ends of his tentacles that he meanly uses to trip up not only unwary fellow campers but even the camp leader. Squish is inspired by his revered comic-book superprotozoan, who in a parallel plot deals briskly with a visiting superhero, a self-serving fluke named Parasite whose arrogance and outsized sense of entitlement lead to some bad behavior—and also by Pod’s demonstration of how to open a black hole with a pirouette. Squish mends fences with the counselor, sends Basil packing (or most of him, anyway) and even finally nerves himself to dive into the pool. Blobby but clothed figures pose beneath big balloons of clearly lettered dialogue and side commentary in the Holms’ thick lined, minimally detailed panels, and the suburban backdrops make it even easier for younger readers to transpose the microbial cast to their macroscopic world.
More evidence that Squish is anything but a Wimpy Kid, for all his diminutive size. (science demo, drawing page) (Graphic novel. 7-9)Pub Date: May 22, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-375-84391-4
Page Count: 96
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Feb. 14, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2012
A myth involving rampant anthropophagy transformed into a lightly sketched tale of parent-child bonding.
The Shark King’s deadly son gets an extreme makeover in this version of a traditional tale from Hawaii.
Born to a loving human woman, Nanaue is a happy child (rather than the flesh-eating monster of yore) with a huge appetite and a jagged line on his back that sometimes opens into a snapping, toothy mouth. His mischievous nature soon leads him into trouble, and he dives off a cliff to escape angry villagers from whom he had been stealing fish. This unites him with his father—a huge shark who had taken human form to marry Nanaue’s mother, Kalei, but returned to the sea on the night of his birth. Johnson presents a quickly told story in bright, fluidly drawn sequential panels of varying size and shape, with a mix of narrative and dialogue. Set against a rocky shoreline and underwater scenes teeming with sea life, his brown-skinned, lightly clad characters gesture and move with smooth naturalism, displaying both distinct personalities and expressions from comical to noble.
A myth involving rampant anthropophagy transformed into a lightly sketched tale of parent-child bonding. (Graphic folktale. 7-9)Pub Date: April 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-935179-16-0
Page Count: 40
Publisher: TOON/Candlewick
Review Posted Online: Feb. 14, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2012
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