CABIN HEAD AND TREE HEAD

The sweet and strange intersect in these comics about two pals with a lot on their minds.

The premise is simple: In this world, everyone sports something on their head. Our protagonists are best friends Cabin Head and Tree Head (vaguely humanoid creatures with little people inhabiting the worlds atop their noggins). Six main stories (with three bonus tales) take this concept and run higgledy-piggledy with it. Readers are treated to tales of terrible “leafcuts” (Garden Head attempts to give Tree Head a new ’do, with hilarious results), treasure hunts with self-made maps, and even a wildly out-of-this-world adventure that reveals that the Earth itself is on someone’s head. Kids will revel in locating and naming all the different “heads” in Campbell’s beautiful watercolor-rendered scenes, even as they chuckle over his delightfully absurd dialogue (“I feel a case of the HELLOS coming on.” “Uh-oh. The HELLOS are nothing to be trifled with”). The primary lures are the humor, the nutty concept, and the detailed depictions of a cheerfully surreal world where everything from clouds to mountain is gently anthropomorphized, but the heartfelt friendship between the two heroes is what will have children and parents coming back again and again.

A wildly original tale with the buddy-based charm of Frog and Toad but imbued with a wacky energy all its own.