Daddy Mojo, Author at Daddy Mojo

Eerie Tales from the School of Screams, a macabre all-age graphic novel

School-age children want to be scared. Nay, school-age children need to experience scary, spooky, well-told stories that shake their skin. They don’t need to be able to quote dialogue from some Korean horror film or break down their favorite Saw entry, but they need to see some darkness, even if it’s splattered with music, humor or thought. Eerie Tales from the School of Screams is a graphic novel that oozes with things that go bump in the night. Its thick presence, patient pacing, and varied short stories elicit a variety and genuine dread, with just a grimace of awareness that makes this graphic novel resonate with those aged eight and up.

Eerie Tales from the School of Screams is an all-age graphic novel that doubles as all-age horror. It’s scary, whilst maintaining humor, heart and creativity.

All-age graphic novel and all-age horror meet in a bar….

Finch House nails the age-appropriate scary scene for ages eight and up

The other year I read The Thief of Always to a group of fifth-grade students. I personally had read some Clive Barker before and wasn’t familiar with this dark fantasy release that’s come to be a modern-day classic. What makes that book so awesome is what makes Finch House, a really great book for those middle-elementary school through lower middle-school readers. It’s age-appropriate scary, which is a really tough characteristic to nail down because if it’s too soft then the young readers will see it as babyish and if it’s too graphic then it won’t be attractive to those readers at all.

Finch House is an age-appropriate ghost tale for ages eight and up that starts dark and evolves into a heartfelt story with spooky vibes.

finicky mglit readers who want genuine creeps beware

The Together Tree, a message illustrated book that knows where it lives

There are certain illustrated books that hammer down into a select age range so efficiently that they’re the Zillow of suspect real estate areas. If you decide on a house that’s just one block down from another it could mean that your dream house has turned into a den of depreciation. The Together Tree is a very cute illustrated book that has its footprint firmly situated in the pre-k through first-grade market. Should any second graders enter the orbit of The Together Tree their “baby book” radar will immediately go off.

The Together Tree is an illustrated book with an anti-bullying message that does so softly for pre-k and kindergarten audiences.

A message book that doesn’t feel like a message book

The Forest Keeper, is non-fiction that’s tough to believe and inspiring to ponder

While his name might not be on the tip of your tongue, you know the story of Jadav Payeng. He’s the Indian teenager who in 1979, started planting seeds on an abandoned, arid, desolate riverbank where nothing had ever grown before. Every day he returned to the area to plant new seeds and water the existing ones. Over time his trees turned into a thicket and then a forest, which eventually attracted insects, then the birds that consume (or live symbiotically with) them. The Forest Keeper is an illustrated book that tells this story in a manner that makes this stranger-than-fiction story grounded and very much in a matter-of-fact.

The Forest Keeper: The True Story of Jadav Payeng, about how he saw a need, did repetitive, seemingly frustrating actions, and planted a new eco-system.

Non-fiction can’t be empowering? Hold my bamboo shoots

A Dollar’s Grand Dream, a fun money allegory that works on two levels

Kids love money. It’s not that they’re greedy Thurston Howell wannabe millionaires, rather, it’s more that they want to be lazy, do-nothing social media influencers who make dopey videos and get paid according to insane Markle-esque levels. A child’s curiosity about money and its power is natural. A Dollar’s Grand Dream felt familiar when I first looked at this illustrated book. Ah-this is similar to the book on pennies that I liked. While I disdain the fact that the penny, as a currency, is still a thing, the book itself was quite charming. This book follows that same template, but because it’s about a dollar, it has more weight, carries more interest, and is a better book because of it.

A Dollar’s Grand Dream is an illustrated book that brings the silly, but also cashes in on humor, a great story and our natural curiosity about money.

Money, puns, jokes and fun in an illustrated book on dollar bills

Super Small, Miniature Marvels of the Natural World is big poetic STEM

STEM and poetry are two things that early elementary illustrated readers don’t see too much of. They see lots of illustrated books on cute topics that softly teach morals or lessons. In those books, there might be rhyming words or stanzas, but it’s not what educators would cast as poetry. The same can be said for the infrequency of non-fiction illustrated books in that there aren’t many of them. Super Small, Miniature Marvels of the Natural World seeks to bridge that gap, by doing so in an improbable combination.

A very smart book in a poetry, biology and STEM illustrated package

All Talk, a graphic novel on gang culture and a ‘good kid’ who dies young

All Talk is a mature graphic novel that you wish didn’t have to exist. It’s a graphic novel that’s laden with violence, occasional foul language and drug use that deftly illustrates the unspoken pressures that weigh down teens in urban areas that are prone to gangs. The story, in and of itself, is fascinating and a relatively simple one, albeit complex for those beings who are in its proximity. It’s the art in All Talk that takes this premise and magnifies it to something that makes readers think more about the story, even if they’re worlds away from where it might actually happen.

A mature graphic novel that serves as a modern allegory on gang culture

In the Tunnel, realistic fiction that breathes life into mglit

There is a reason that people read different types of genres. If you read stories that roughly revolve around the same characters or situations that you’re used to then your perspective will never expand or be challenged. Don’t misinterpret that sentence. By “challenge” I mean “to grow” or expand what you think that you know, and not to confront or bicker merely for the sake of argument. Granted, some books will certainly troll or bait folks into circular conflict, but literature like that is easy to spot. Into the Tunnel is realistic fiction that “challenges” mglit readers in just the right way.

Branch on out and try mglit with a historical fiction, humanity vibe