Saddled with lots of rules and constraints but some brainwork—and no batteries—required.
A seemingly innocent red-cloaked girl and her evil grandma aren’t the only hazards awaiting visitors to a magic wood in this graphic “choose your path” adventure.
Eager to undertake their “Masters of the magical creatures” exam, sibs Hocus and Pocus trot off into Grimm’s Woods in search of two vanished children—then proceed to go their separate ways to encounters with wolves, witches, and other familiar, if sometimes tweaked, residents. The intertwined storylines are played as a game: Readers choose either Hocus or Pocus as avatars; select one of three magical helpers; and then flip back or forth from one numbered panel of cleanly drawn cartoon art to another as options and narrative instructions direct. Challenges added to the plotted hazards include simple number and math puzzles to solve, mazes to run, phrases with missing letters, mini board games requiring coins and dice, and other tests. Game sheets (6 provided, further copies available as a download) are required to keep track of used supplies and accumulated rewards. Players with short attention spans may find all the record-keeping onerous, and too many of the panels are only transitional filler. Still, there are a fair number of cliffhangers, the level of explicit violence is low, and ultimately “you” as either Hocus or Pocus get to shove the witch into a bubbling pot and rescue the children. Hocus, Pocus, and the other human and humanoid characters for the most part present white.
Saddled with lots of rules and constraints but some brainwork—and no batteries—required. (Graphic game fantasy. 8-11)Pub Date: Sept. 4, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-68369-057-3
Page Count: 153
Publisher: Quirk Books
Review Posted Online: July 23, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2018
Alert readers will find the implicit morals: know your audience, mostly, but also never underestimate the power of “rock”...
The theme of persistence (for better or worse) links four tales of magic, trickery, and near disasters.
Lachenmeyer freely borrows familiar folkloric elements, subjecting them to mildly comical twists. In the nearly wordless “Hip Hop Wish,” a frog inadvertently rubs a magic lamp and finds itself saddled with an importunate genie eager to shower it with inappropriate goods and riches. In the title tale, an increasingly annoyed music-hating witch transforms a persistent minstrel into a still-warbling cow, horse, sheep, goat, pig, duck, and rock in succession—then is horrified to catch herself humming a tune. Athesius the sorcerer outwits Warthius, a rival trying to steal his spells via a parrot, by casting silly ones in Ig-pay Atin-lay in the third episode, and in the finale, a painter’s repeated efforts to create a flattering portrait of an ogre king nearly get him thrown into a dungeon…until he suddenly understands what an ogre’s idea of “flattering” might be. The narratives, dialogue, and sound effects leave plenty of elbow room in Blocker’s big, brightly colored panels for the expressive animal and human(ish) figures—most of the latter being light skinned except for the golden genie, the blue ogre, and several people of color in the “Sorcerer’s New Pet.”
Alert readers will find the implicit morals: know your audience, mostly, but also never underestimate the power of “rock” music. (Graphic short stories. 8-10)Pub Date: June 18, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-59643-750-0
Page Count: 112
Publisher: First Second
Review Posted Online: April 27, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2019
This kid-friendly satire ably sets claws into a certain real-life franchise.
A trip to the Love Love Angel Kitty World theme park (“The Most Super Incredibly Happy Place on Earth!”) turns out to be an exercise in lowered expectations…to say the least.
When Uncle Murray wins a pair of free passes it seems at first like a dream come true—at least for Kitty, whose collection of Love Love Kitty merch ranges from branded underwear to a pink chainsaw. But the whole trip turns into a series of crises beginning with the (as it turns out) insuperable challenge of getting a cat onto an airplane, followed by the twin discoveries that the hotel room doesn’t come with a litter box and that the park doesn’t allow cats. Even kindhearted Uncle Murray finds his patience, not to say sanity, tested by extreme sticker shock in the park’s gift shop and repeated exposures to Kitty World’s literally nauseating theme song (notation included). He is not happy. Fortunately, the whole cloying enterprise being a fiendish plot to make people so sick of cats that they’ll pick poultry as favorite pets instead, the revelation of Kitty’s feline identity puts the all-chicken staff to flight and leaves the financial coffers plucked. Uncle Murray’s White, dumpy, middle-aged figure is virtually the only human one among an otherwise all-animal cast in Bruel’s big, rapidly sequenced, and properly comical cartoon panels.
This kid-friendly satire ably sets claws into a certain real-life franchise. (Graphic satire. 8-11)Pub Date: Dec. 29, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-20808-8
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Roaring Brook Press
Review Posted Online: Sept. 28, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2020
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