A Giant Mess, a confidence-building, kid’s first graphic novel for K-1

Getting emerging readers to actually read is a delicate mix of content and confidence. They will know how to read sight words, but getting them to read aloud is key towards their understanding and making the bridge to early chapter books. All of this is further complicated by what’s in the book. If there are too many words it could intimidate some readers. If there aren’t enough pictures then the books might not be engaging enough. I Like to Read Comics is an imprint from Holiday House Publishing that delivers the comic book feels in a contained story that’s on par for emerging readers. A Giant Mess is a hard-back book that nails all of those points to the floor in a story that’s big, manic, and just what the doctor ordered for kindergarten kids through first grade.  

A Giant Mess is a homonym of a term that would be at home in No Reading Aloud. One could think of A Giant Mess as a big area that’s not clean, but it could also be a giant creature who leaves behind a trail of destruction and disorganization. In I Like to Read Comics, A Giant Mess by Jeffrey Ebbeler we meet Molly, a young girl who has lots of toys and sometimes doesn’t keep her room as neat as her mom would like her to. So this is obviously a work of fiction.

 Molly has a big toy box, but being a kid is busy and sometimes those toys just end up all over the room don’t they? Her mom is intent on keeping the house clean and just as Molly is about to finally start organizing and putting her toys away the house starts shaking. Molly sees a pair of massive, green feet that are about as long as her house, stomping around town.

This giant has lots of toys too. Unfortunately for Molly and the rest of the people that live in the city, its toys are what they use to move around, live in, or travel on. The giant even claims Molly as one of its dolls and places her inside some of the appropriately-sized scale toys. She tells the giant that she’s not a toy and to not treat her as such. Molly also parrots the giant’s parents when they tell him that he has to clean up his toys.

Now it’s the giant’s turn to behave like Molly. The giant says that it’s too hard, the task is impossible and that all he wants to do is play. If there was a close-up of Molly’s face it would probably show her rolling her eyes because she knows that these excuses are lame and nothing but a distraction tactic. Of course, Molly knows this because it’s the same, tired argument that she uses when her mom asks her to do the same thing. The big difference now is that Molly is the one who is being left exasperated at someone who’s acting like a baby and not listening to them.

A Giant Mess concludes the book with a sense of love, quickly followed by a laugh and the nagging choice that Molly either has an active imagination, or the two of them are simply playthings in a giant’s room. Emerging readers will appreciate the independence that the book affords them. It’s a stand-alone, hardback book that less of a landscape layout than what they’re accustomed to. Being that it’s in the I Like to Read Comics series it’s obviously loaded with illustrations. Those readers or their parents could even think of it as a kid’s first graphic novel. The illustrations will attract them, but it’s the dialogue that they have to read that will move the story forward.

After kids read the story once they’ll probably discover the inside front and the inside back cover. They’re both aerial pictures of a city center, but the first one is with the city intact, whereas the second one shows it after the giant has ‘played’. A Giant Mess is great, simple fun that ages four through six will enjoy. This is a happy, carefree book that gently teaches emerging readers the joy of reading. And sometimes, the joy or the lessons that it teaches are as simple as making a fun book that kids want to spend time with when the parents aren’t around. Of course, that simple task is very elusive, isn’t it?

A Giant Mess is by Jeffrey Ebbeler and in the I Like to Read Comics imprint from Holiday House Publishing.

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