There are certain markers that define cultural zeitgeists. A Minecraft Movie is one of those instances. As a video game launched in 2011 it has a built-in fan base of millions of kids. Some of them will be knee-deep in their appreciation and fandom, others are about enter it and some stopped playing it in lieu of other games. Our family has two kids in the Minecraft interest world, both of whom had different reactions to A Minecraft Movie.
If you were paying attention, we learned (or were reminded) that birds are descendants of dinosaurs. Dinosaurs Can Be Small is an illustrated book that dinosaur kids need. Those hard dinosaur kids, like the younger brother in Mitchell Vs. The Machines, that kid. If your child or students salivate at the thought of reading or having read to them, descriptions of giant lizards who died out so that the smallest of their brethren could survive, this is for you. This illustrated book sets up the smaller, lesser-known versions by introducing their more well-known, larger versions first. The result is a very curious dinosaur book that will entice dino-kids who think they know it all because they saw Jurassic Park for the dinosaur facts, and not the fact that they run amuck.
What if Team America: World Police had a graphic novel baby with The Far Side. All you’d have to do is give it a British accent, colorize it, sprinkle in more dark humor with climate change references and you’ve got Hi, Earth. It’s a bitingly funny graphic novel that will reward comic strip fans who thought they’d never see another series with revolving characters in disparate situations that are able to make you belly laugh in four panels. That’s a mouthful and if it’s too much then know that Hi, Earth is from the two that brought the very funny webcomics, War and Peas to your inbox.
All hail the silly illustrated book. We reviewed a great silly book the other week, but it’s never too soon to read the silly again. Much like the well-respected Ministry of Silly Walks, a silly book is mandatory for carpet-time readers and the read-aloud crowd. All at Once Upon a Time is peak silly. To older audiences, it could be viewed as an absurd upending of fairytale tropes that most audiences can quote ad infinitum. Younger audiences who don’t know the tropes will enjoy All at Once Upon a Time because of the energy and laughter it produces from the things they thought would happen.
What is an IV? As an adult, I know what an IV does, and I have a vague idea of what goes into putting it in your arm. However, as a child, the concept of having an IV inserted into my arm would’ve scared me silly. This is where illustrated books such as What’s An IV? is an illustrated book intended for elementary school-aged children who need to have an IV put into their arm. It’s approachable and has the potential to put kids at ease about the process, at least as much as they can be.
There is room in science for abject, over-the-top silliness. Young audiences, the kinds that embrace illustrated books like a cat to a laser pointer need the silly, but sometimes yearn for the science. Dinosaurs In Space hammers into that void with the subtlety of your neighbor’s use of the leaf blower at 7:30 on Saturday morning. This is an illustrated book that asks a question without directly posing it, allows kids to imagine the impossible, but tells them that it just might be probable. It breaks the fourth wall, weaves in non-fiction STEM, makes readers laugh and achieves the very difficult task of making a page-turner book for the illustrated audience.
There’s a two-page spread in My Dear Sea that perfectly encapsulates the imagination of a child and how they see things. It’s just halfway through the book and shows a young girl running on the shore parallel to the sea. There are outcrops of sand dunes that poke out from the sea, towering above her, set against an impossibly ocean that’s a black as a thousand midnights at the bottom; but becomes that gorgeous light azul you only see in the Caribbean or near Lake Ohrid. The disparate chasm between shallow and deep probably doesn’t occur quickly, but kids imagine it to be that deep. My Dear Sea is an illustrated book about a young girl’s conversation with the sea, how she imagines it appear in its depths and the creatures that live there in her mind’s eye.
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.
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