Big Nate, Hug It Out! review

A used car or a library book that you see at the book barn is new to you if you don’t already have it. The ‘new to you’ philosophy is one that we adhere to wholeheartedly. That’s one reason why streaming is popular in our house. If we missed something the first time then that’s an excellent way to get caught up on quality. Enter, Big Nate Hug It Out!, a collection of strips from the dependable comic strip by Lincoln Peirce.

Hug It Out collects 173 pages of this flat-out hilarious daily comic strip that were originally published between spring and fall of 2015. When I look at that as a year, it seems like it was ages ago. Our internet was so much slower then, flying cars weren’t around and The Backstreet Boys were still popular. That is when these comic strips first saw the light of day, possibly in a newspaper, but also online, probably at GoComics.

Four years can be an eternity. Our children were half the age that they are now. However, looking back through the prism of time and reading Big Nate Hug It Out! for the first time proves what we’ve always enjoyed about this strip. It is timeless-and that’s a difficult characteristic to achieve in a daily comic strip.

To do that the strip can’t be timely nor talk about current events. That sounds easy in theory, but it also means that the content that you create is stuck in a time warp forever, unless you’re the rare comic strip unicorn that has their characters age. Alas, Big Nate is perpetually stuck in middle school. But he’s making the best of it and so much the better for us as we’re able to read his misadventures and relate to every single episode in his life.

Upper elementary kids and older will identify and enjoy what Nate experiences in life. It’s awkward, hilarious, cringe worthy and will make older readers remember when that happened; regardless of how old the reader is. Our 9 year-old can remember when things happened to him that also happened to Nate. He’ll laugh out loud. He’ll do this by himself, in his room. I’ll also laugh out loud. I’ll do this in my office, bed or on the back deck.

It wasn’t until after his ninth birthday that Big Nate started to click with him. We tried to introduce the strip to him numerous times, but he never took to it. Then at about nine and a half he searched out all of my Big Nate books, started borrowing them from the library and purchasing the used copies that he didn’t have from the book barn.

 Big Nate Hug It Out! is a fabulous jumping on point for the character or an excellent continuation if you’re already familiar with him. It’s also one of those books that never ages. You’ll keep it in the permanent library until your children take it over and pass along the ‘classics’ to their kids.