A nearly wordless tale, billed as “Level One” but probably with a more natural audience among teens or adults, centers on a long chase after a fugitive broken heart.
The departure of her best friend in a rocket ship leaves Penelope—depicted in the geometrical, silkscreen-style art with a human body and the head and tail of a fox—sitting beside the sea with her cracked heart in her lap. When that heart slips into the water and is carried away by dolphins, birds, a paper airplane and other agents, she pursues it, picking up a chicken-headed, cartwheeling companion she has met along the way. Penelope finds it at last in a “garden of lost things” but then sacrifices it to rescue her new friend from a toothy monster. In return, her new friend presents her with an egg that cracks open in the final scene to reveal an unmarked replacement heart. Sound effects and short lines of dialogue in the large sequential panels won’t help younger readers make sense of either the characters or the sketchy storyline. A metaphorical journey toward healing from traumatic loss inspired, writes Rowe, by the death of her cat—not, as the cover protests, a “first comic for brand-new readers!” (Graphic picture book. 13 & up)
Pub Date: Jan. 7, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-9351-7959-7
Page Count: 32
Publisher: TOON/Candlewick
Review Posted Online: Dec. 10, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
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
Makes The True Story of the Three Little Pigs (1989) look positively wholesome in comparison.
In this “origins” tale, a slug of liquid courage prompts nerdy Albert the wolf to seek justice as a costumed superhero against the three porcine Honeyroast brothers and their gangster dad Al Prosciutto.
Years after being bullied by the Honeyroasts at the Snobtown Academy, Albert has grown up to realize his dream of working for Wonder Comics (albeit as a janitor). Albert no sooner learns that his former nemeses are living high off the hog than a suspicious fire in one of their buildings kills all of his school buddies. Predictably depressed, he is fired up after a hobo offers a drink from a bottle in a brown paper bag (“It’s mighty powerful stuff. It’ll give you all the strength you’ll ever need…”). He dons a mask and cape made in his youth and sets out “to topple the towers of tyranny and to huff and puff and blow all asunder who stood in the way of righteousness.” Lie pairs cramped-looking blocks of small type with full-page or multi-paneled cartoon illustrations infused with murky red tones and printed on rough paper in grainy textures, giving them a dim, pulpy, retro look. “Yes, Albert would become the Lone Wolf,” the author concludes. “Hear his whistle.”
Makes The True Story of the Three Little Pigs (1989) look positively wholesome in comparison. (Picture book. 14 & up)Pub Date: May 8, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-907704-03-1
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Nobrow Ltd.
Review Posted Online: April 18, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
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