Grown With Love: A Delightfully Strange Children’s Book Review

There is a balance in illustrated books between being sufficiently weird, but endearing enough to be of merit to adults, educators and parents. Of course there are some books that are straight up gonzo strange, sappy to the point of Hallmark or unicorn happiness to the max. For the most part, those mass-appeal illustrated books that have legs need to be slightly grounded. However, children need them to be a little odd in order to rope in readers and audiences who might otherwise gravitate towards anything else. Grown With Love is just left-of-center enough to bring in aspects any Tim Burton movie, but has the Earthy tones of Up or other entertaining vehicles that subvert a tug at your emotions.

Grown With Love is a lovely combination of sincere, odd and creepy about a kid scientist who uses botany to help people.
It’s love and company, in an odd package that works

The Other Side of Tomorrow: A Graphic Novel Review

Are hyper-realistic graphic novels a genre? I don’t think they are, but The Other Side of Tomorrow is a graphic novel that wields a mighty hammer in knocking at the doors of book classification. It’s realistic fiction, but is so realistic, both in the manner in which the illustrations are done, and the taut nature of the story that you’ll pinch yourself in gratitude that it’s not happening to you. This is a graphic novel that entertains via drama, age-appropriate political intrigue, familial love and armchair travel. Moreover, The Other Side of Tomorrow manages to tell its story alongside one of the greatest geographic areas and humanitarian crises that middle school kids never learn about, North Korea.

The Other Side of Tomorrow is a realistic fiction graphic novel whose potentially heavy topic is buoyed by the art, presentation and pacing of the story.
A graphic novel as art, entertainment and discussion

Butt or Face? How Humorous Books Attract Kids

How to engage young readers? You can mention something slightly inappropriate like a butt. You can make age-appropriate jokes that are a little bit rude. You can involve pictures of animals, early elementary-age readers love animals. You can ask questions. Who doesn’t like to answer a question? It’s a reflexive action like catching a ball when one is thrown to you. Butt or Face? Revenge of the Butts, the target demographic might also call it Butt or Face #2 and are also lining up to see Butt or Face #3, as long as they get to say the name of the book aloud in class.

Butt or Face? Revenge of the Butts combines the curious and the gross in an age-appropriate nature book that makes them laugh and learn.
Butt or Face? Volume 2, pun to the patootie

Chicka Chicka Ho Ho Ho: A Holiday Delight for Young Readers

Jean Luc tried and failed. You will too if you attempt to resist the charm of Chicka Chicka Ho Ho Ho. But, I’m too old for an alphabet book. I don’t need to look at shapes, where’s my cell phone? Chicka Chicka is for babies and the level of creativity and enjoy for that tripe ends when you turn seven. Chicka Chicka Ho Ho Ho says hold my juice box. This is fun. This book runs with energy, has a contained story, but is reminiscent of something classic and punches with seasonal Christmas tidings that forces kids to have fun with a book-something they had unconsciously sworn off when the winter break started.

Chicka Chicka Ho Ho Ho follows a similar format as its classic namesake, but wrinkles in some Christmas mojo for a timeless illustrated picture book.
Christmas, chicka awesomeness for the ages

Black Lives: Celebrating Scientists in Graphic Form

Whenever I substitute for a math or music class I run the students through a basic critical thinking question. What are the two universal languages that can be understood anywhere you go? On average one, maybe two students in a class of 28 will respond with music and math. Some might say “science” and while that’s not the desired response, it does illustrate the room’s temperature. Black Lives: Great Minds of Science is a graphic novel highlighting nine scientists from various fields. As a vehicle for information it grabs your attention and speaks to upper-elementary and mglit readers in a way that motivates reluctant ones.

Those reluctant readers, you know, the kids who secretly want to read, but have bought into the group-think, lemming-like fallacy that reading somehow makes you less cool. To those students I would posit this simple question, is it cool to earn more money, or less money? Yeah, money doesn’t make you happy, it’s just a tool, I know that. But if you’re going to fix or build something you need the correct tool and sometimes, if it’s a bigger job, you need more tools or the job becomes infinitely more challenging. Great Minds of Science is created for those reluctant readers.

Black Lives: Great Minds of Science is a non-fiction graphic novel that profiles nine STEM scientists for ages 9-13.
sCIENCE, stem AND GRAPHIC NOVEL PRESENTATION

Bunnybirds fills a graphic novel void that lives in elementary readers

It’s ok to have books geared more toward girls than boys. It’s also ok for boys to have books that mainly appeal to them. There are also some books that cross-over to both groups with varying degrees, but could have elements that interest each camp. Bunnybirds is a graphic novel, whose genre is typically associated with boys. However, this is one of the rare graphic novels that will appeal to girls just a little bit more than boys.  There are dragons and action elements in Bunnybirds, but the main characters are bunnies with wings. If you suspect that your young reader could become a fan of the massive mglit juggernaut, Warriors, this graphic novel is the prep material for them.

Bunnybirds successfully fills a graphic novel void that lives in elementary readers. It’s one that mainly connects with girls, but has enough cross-over to not offend some boys that age.
Flying bunnies or hopping rabbits?

The Most Perfect Persimmon: A Young Reader’s Delight

I have never eaten a persimmon. It sounds more like an adjective than a fruit to me. The students felt quite persimmon when they realized the difficulty of the test. The Most Perfect Persimmon is an illustrated book that’s a love letter to family, patience, creature comforts and the fleeting search for perfection. That last bit might be too esoteric, but the nature of the young girl in the book and the brief period that a persimmon is perfect brings about comparisons to avocados.

You don’t need to know what it is to enjoy The Most Perfect Persimmon. It’s a happy illustrated book that easily leads conversations for the story time crowd.
You don’t need to know it to enjoy it

Red One falls between many cracks to the land of cinematic coal

Our wheelhouse has a litmus test called the Christmas Music (or Movie) test. In brief, people are more forgiving, and artists are more apt to create projects when they are centered around Christmas. The cynic says that it’s a built-in holiday audience that will create traditions around a song or a movie. The artists will say with a straight face that they’ve always loved the holiday and are out to entertain the kids. There are some songs or movies that are wonderful regardless of their Santa inclusion and those creations pass the Christmas Movie (or music) test. Red One is a Christmas movie, does it pass this test?

Red One is in a North Pole-sized ditch and fails as an action movie, Christmas movie and feel-good flick, falling short in each metric.
Come sleigh away, come sleigh away,
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