The Inventor’s Workshop, STEM-fun for potato chip and cat video kids

The potato chip and cat video test is gauging whether or not a kid will want to read a book based on just one page. Because, much like a potato chip or a cat video, you can’t eat or watch just one. Some might relate better to the M&M or slice of pizza test, but the latter is far too large for repeated snacking, isn’t it?  The Inventor’s Workshop: How People and Machines Transformed Each Other is a wonderful book that crosses through reference material, a loose time travelling narrative, countless blurbs of digestible information and detailed illustrations that channel a search for a lanky, bespectacled, poofy-haired, Brit who is hiding in plain sight.

The Inventor’s Workshop is a fun, easy-to-read illustrated book about inventors, their inventions, and how they’ve morphed over time.
Resistence is futile

Sunday, meets the needs and desires of its young audiences

Hi, Daddy Mojo here and in the immortal words of Billy Mays, but wait, there’s more, there is more to Sunday. The wordplay in the text is very clever and parlays the meanings behind some of the imagery. When Martin and Maize return, the eight pages where the three of them sit on the sofa could have been a snoozefest that made readers of all ages check out the book. Instead, it sucks readers in further simply by focusing in on the details. It’s just a black hole, but I keep getting closer and closer until I can only see the closing void of space.

Sunday is an illustrated book that’s immediately timeless, combing spot-on art with brief text about the power of imagination.
Sunday, sunday, more than the sum of its beautiful parts

Haruki Murakami Manga Stories 2: a surreal graphic novel mirror

Haruki Murakami is Japan’s best-selling, living author. His books have been translated into over 50 languages, with millions of copies sold worldwide. Haruki Murakami Manga Stories 2: The Second Bakery Attack, Samsa in Love, Thailand are a curious itch. The three short stories in graphic novel form are jarring, visceral, in your face and take a moment to be absorbed. This is a graphic novel in the vein of art, with a surreal story that weaves between metaphors, allegory and absurdity without any warning.

Haruki Murakami Manga Stories 2 are the manga form of three classic short stories from the legendary Japanese author.
art is relative, this is manga art

Skybound!, a non-fiction, entrepreneurial illustrated book is easy to love

Why do we read? There’s a poster in a class that I’m teaching now that lists Great Reasons to Read. Yeah, that list might seem passé or obligatory, but for a group of high school students who would sooner watch paint dry, so long as it’s on their cell phone, they need to be reminded as to what reading can do for their ever-growing brains. Skybound! Starring Mary Myers as Carlotta, Daredevil Aeronaut and Scientist check off every one of the things listed on that list, if such a list exists for elementary school ages. Spoiler alert: that list exists and it’s the same one that’s in the high school class; it’s just that young audiences like elementary school readers need to have it presented with a little more panache, enthusiasm, and show.

Skybound! is the sort of illustrated book that is easy to love. The story is loaded with action, unbelievable exploits, descriptive text and non-fiction thrills.
Solid Gold was much more than a comeback

Despicable Me 4, rote minion and baby hijinks for ages 8-13

Adding a baby to the cast of characters in a sequel is the canary of intellectual property death. The most obvious offender for us is Muppet Babies, but there have been many others. Angel, Murphy Brown, Friends are the first ones that rip off of the top of my head. And while casual fans of those shows or the movies that have hit that creative dearth might struggle to remember the specifics, they can vaguely recall that entry as the one with the baby. Despicable Me 4 is the one with the baby and lest there be anyone who didn’t suspect that’s a major plot point, there’s a baby on Gru’s back on the DVD’s cover. One of the minions is beside him, channeling its best yellow-Men-In-Black impersonation with a ray gun of sort in its gloved-yellow hand.

Despicable Me 4 adds a baby and exposes Gru and co. to a higher standard that doesn’t measure up to previous films.
The sweet spot for 8-11 YO minions, but not past that

Amazing Abe, an illustrated book that’s more than niche history

Not Lincoln, Abraham Cahan, nonetheless amazing, but not as well known as the stovepipe-hat-wearing President of the United States. Amazing Abe: How Abraham Cahan’s Newspaper Gave a Voice to Jewish Immigrants could be a tough sell to elementary age audiences. It could be, but it overcomes the non-fiction, biography resistance to unknown figures that those ages have by making the book accessible in its brief text that highlights enough of Cahan’s interesting life to make kids want to care. Amazing Abe also detailed art, but not so much so that it looks real, it’s right in the area encompassing the kind that clever kids want to see in their illustrated books.

It follows the template for making unknown figures interesting

Bounce! A Scientific History of Rubber-STEM story and fun for ages 6 and up

This is a thick book. Why is this book so thick? It’s either loaded with fluff or has too many white pages. Alas, it is thick, but its physical pages are thicker than the average illustrated book, plus it’s loaded with fun, easy-to-understand, STEM facts about the evolution and process of rubber. To those first reactions I say, don’t be intimidated by its thickness. Instead, just enjoy the fact that Bounce! A Scientific History of Rubber is able to create a non-fiction, linear story with STEM nuggets woven in that young readers won’t be turned off by. It can be challenging to get young readers to accept illustrated books that don’t have unicorns or animals in it, thus the first hurdle towards getting them in the book is not getting in the way.

Bounce! A Scientific History of Rubber is an illustrated book that gleefully dances between narrative story and a STEM primer for ages six and up.
Bounce! Before it was a verb that the kids say “to leave”

The Mad Files Review: Nostalgia and Humor Explored

I bought a Mad Magazine at our local comic book store a couple of years ago. As a teenager, back in the early-to-mid 80’s, I read Mad Magazine quite often. My friends and I would sleep over, share our monthly copies, bring the Mad paperback books we’d collected, read silently and occasionally repeat one of the jokes aloud. My favorite flip-flopped between the art by Sergio Aragones, Spy Vs. Spy, and the Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions segments. If The Mad Files: Writers and Cartoonists on the Magazine that Warped America’s Brain! had a song that played along while you were reading it would be Little River Band and Reminiscing.

The Mad Files, a collection of funny and thought-provoking essays about the genius irreverence of Mad Magazine brings back good love.
Take an essay-bourne trip down Mad Magazine Memory lane
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