THE TOTALLY AWESOME EPIC QUEST OF THE BRAVE BOY KNIGHT

A girl with strange powers and a subversive sense of humor bedevils the epic adventures of a young knight-aspirant and his Bigfoot sidekick.

He might be wearing a colander on his head, but this contemporary boy-knight is aching for action, some real knightly questing. With the appearance of the Animal Princess, his wish seems to be on the verge of coming true: She has a "totally epic quest for two knights" to dispense. The boy and his friend, who resembles Sasquatch, are game. There follows three quick adventures that may find some echoes for older readers—the lion and the mouse, the grail quest—which all end with the princess pulling the rug out from under the knight. The tales are loopily involving, allowing both the boy and the girl to play big parts, with humor that comes in broad strokes that Naujokaitis vividly paints on the faces of the actors. The panels in general have an appealingly heightened sense of emotion, with terrific facial expressions and an unassuming sophistication in coloration, though both the text and the graphics remain true to a focus on fundamentals.

The kind of big-hearted fun that may lose its element of surprise, but not its power to please young readers.