Pablo and Splash: Frozen In Time, early elementary graphic novel greatness

Oh to be young, carefree and to enjoy things without being judged. Pablo and Splash: Frozen In Time take me away. This is a graphic novel whose core audience will know when it’s speaking to them and precisely when it’s not. It’s that narrow group of students in middle-elementary school who like to look at early reader graphic novels because of the illustrations, say they don’t like to read, but secretly don’t mind it if they’re left to their own devices. The go-to graphic novel in this class is commonly known as Dog Man, but Investigators is funnier (and has a wider audience), plus there many other examples that cross over into this Venn diagram.

Pablo and Splash scratches this itch for ages six through ten and could be called comfort reading food or emerging reader manna, depending who’s holding Frozen In Time. It has all of the elements that kids want, time travel and a pair of comedic, anthropomorphic animals who remind everyone of someone. Pablo is like my friend Sahir. Splash is just like Tom’s sister. The professor (Professor O’Brain) seems like they’d be a much better teacher than Mr. Jones. There’s also a grumpy penguin named Benji who acts as the real-life foible for the tuxedo-clad birds.

This is the second adventure for Pablo and Splash and the two recap their ability to time travel. They cover the machine that transports them, a glimpse into what they saw and the shenanigans that they could encounter in this book in the very short first chapter. As the second chapter starts, the two go to the hole in the ground that leads them to their underground science headquarters. There are two other penguins who discovered the covered hole and are wondering what’s down there; but they’re quickly dispatched by some clever puns and an early-elementary style sign.

Clever puns, usually inspired by a fish body part or other animal that they might be fins with are the bread and butter of Pablo and Splash: Frozen In Time. TimeBender is the spherical time machine that was created by Professor O’Brain. Even that name invokes curiosity and a whimsical sense of fun that elementary ages will get, without having it overtly shoved in their finicky faces. If a book tries too hard to lure early through upper-elementary ages, they’ll quickly realize that fact and run back to the corner of ignorance.

It’s important to note that the corner of ignorance is in the same room as the corner of stupidity. Those young ages, anyone actually, can learn about anything at any level as long as they don’t psyche themselves out. We are our own greatest enemy, aren’t we? A six-year-old kid can have buckets of fun reading. They know about Dog Man, but do they know about Pablo and Splash? That completely sounds like the opening verse to a Christmas song.

For those ages, the ones who are six through eleven, Pablo and Splash: Frozen In Time is a graphic novel that has the power to speak to them. It sucks them in with the silly, splashes in enough adventure and swirls around friendship, but then adds an unknown variable that will make their imagination crawl. Speculative science is in there of course with time travel, a time machine and the paradox of going back to the last ice age. Also at various points in the story, there are non-fiction facts about polar conditions and more, plus a couple of pages at the end of Frozen In Time about penguins. For example, penguins, like all birds don’t pee. Once you find that out you’ll open up a search window, learn that other sea birds don’t urinate too and that up to 3% of the Arctic ice is made up of penguin pee and that they poop six to eight times an hour. Let young children go down that tuxedo-ridden rabbit hole, Pablo and Splash will show them the way, the humor will grease the slide and the book’s cumulative effect.

Pablo and Splash: Frozen In Time is by Sheena Dempsey and is available on Bloomsbury Books. 

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Pablo and Splash: Frozen In Time is just the ticket to warm over elementary school readers who need to read, but want something different.  

Pablo and Splash: Frozen In Time, early elementary graphic novel greatness