The Mighty Bite: Walrus Brawl as the Mall!, absurd so good

That song from Mellencamp is so overplayed in the summer. Is it that terrestrial radio plays certain songs more during that time of year, or are you simply listening to the radio more? In other news, have you ever not had something because the other thing you consumed from that entity was so good? We eat at a pizza place like that. Their pizza is so great, but I’m hesitant to order other things off the menu out of fear that it wouldn’t measure up to the thing I already like from them.  Nathan Hale has a pizza place, it’s called Hazardous Tales. They’re a series of non-fiction graphic novels that makes American history entertaining and allows upper-elementary through high school and older the chance to actually enjoy learning through reading. When I first saw The Mighty Bite from Nathan Hale I immediately knew it was from his kitchen, but I didn’t try any of it. The Mighty Bite: Walrus Brawl at the Mall! is the second entry in this series and proves that you need to try new things on the menu. Not only is Walrus Brawl at the Mall! a great graphic novel for fans of Hazardous Tales, it enters the all-age graphic novel smackdown and lays competition to Investigators and Dog Man.

Easy there McFly, you can’t just claim that something should be associated with the go-to series of graphic novels for elementary school ages and get away with it. Where is the proof? We’ve only read The Mighty Bite #2, so let’s examine what those possibly reluctant readers about this green, black and white graphic novel.

Yeah, there are only three colors used in Walrus Brawl at the Mall!. These are the rose-colored glasses that your uncle Kant stop wearing and now you see things the way that they do. The illustrations don’t have the full-spectrum rainbow palette of Investigators or Dog Man. Prior to this I’ve seen graphic novels that were black and white, like manga, but never one like this. The cover and spine also have some yellow and purple, but those hues didn’t make it to the interior.

Brawl starts with an introduction that’s conducted like a sports show with The Mighty Bite wrangling things. Radcliff, the friendly gorilla is beside the trilobite and proceeds to introduce the players in the graphic novel. Tiffany, Amber, Tiny Spinosaur, and The Might Bite make up our heroes who are traveling while shooting STEM-based online videos. Tiffany is one of two humans in the cast while everyone else is an anthropomorphic critter, pinniped, mammal, bird, reptile, or dinosaur.

Stop me if your elementary-aged child or student has said this before, but, the team is out to create a viral video. Unlike that nine-year-old version of you in the other room, they are out to accomplish this by creating STEM videos on marine life. There are a couple of members in the team who quickly acknowledge that fart jokes are funnier and have a much higher likelihood of going viral. The group is joking around when one of them dresses up as an opera singer and has Tiny Spinosaur wallop them with a golf club.

This leads them to the hospital where their stupid video racks us millions of hits and earns them money. Unfortunately, they proceed to waste their money at the mall, which leads them to a fight with a group of mammals who control the conflict community in a way that’s similar to the mafia. The now viral group of STEM video creators who are famous for a dopey video instead of smart ones have been challenged by a horde of sea mammals in a wrestling match to the death.

There is a disclaimer in the beginning of Walrus Brawls at the Mall! that the characters in the book do stupid things and suffer no repercussions for their actions. The action and humor in the graphic novel is fast, over the top, silly, chaotic and constant. It never has a laugh-out-loud moment, but it makes you smile, opens your mouth in a Chesire-cat grin, as if you’re about to audibly laugh, and is so thoroughly enjoyable that you’ll take a moment to reflect on what you’re reading.

It’s very silly, but it’s also very smart. However, the intelligence of Walrus Brawl at the Mall! never gets in the way of its prime directive of being entertaining. To that end, because it aims just a bit higher, it has more in common with Investigators, than Dog Man. Its reading level is consistent with both graphic novels and its level of silly is equally distributed between the two.

Will ages seven and up enjoy The Mighty Bite: Walrus Brawl at the Mall!? Yes. They need to get past the complete unfamiliarity of it, but once they do that they will gleefully lose themselves in a world that seems alien, but parallels their life in many ways. They will never attend a mammal wrestling match in a floating mall that’s staffed by beavers, otters, and seals. However, they will daydream about creating viral videos, have friends that do stupid things, raise their voices, play video games, face adversity, and more that all happen in this graphic novel. The silliness that happens in the book is a happy byproduct that might be the secret sauce to elementary ages learning to love to read, if it baits the hook for them to learn about Hale’s other, non-fiction dishes that’s a win too.

The Mighty Bite: Walrus Brawl at the Mall! is by New York Times bestselling author Nathan Hale and is available on Amulet Books, an imprint of Abrams Books.

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