Standard-issue knockoff, with personal and racial issues presented in mildly provocative ways, some gross bits and a few...
A Web cartoonist and graphic novelist (Monster on the Hill, 2013) climbs aboard the crowded Wimpy Kid bandwagon with this tale of a middle schooler who belongs to a despised minority: He’s a troll.
With lots of telling and rather less showing (at least in the prose), Zarf (“rhymes with ‘barf’ ”) introduces his bridge-dwelling family, nerdy buddies Kevin (porcine scion of the famed Littlepig clan) and Chester, and troll-hating archnemesis Prince Roquefort—pint-sized tyrant of Cotswin Middle School. Zarf wryly recounts his various misadventures in a mix of prose and, on every page, one to two cartoon line illustrations with added dialogue or punch lines. These occur on the way to rescuing Roquefort’s much more lovable royal father from a tasty marinade bath prepared by a colony of 7-foot-tall Snuffweasels and then facing a huge if, as it turns out, somewhat wimpy dragon. These and other challenges help Zarf get a handle on the berserker rage issues that haunt him and afflict his kind. Depicted with droopy pointed ears, a wild shock of hair and, often, a disgruntled expression, he makes an adequate stand-in for outsiders of any stripe.
Standard-issue knockoff, with personal and racial issues presented in mildly provocative ways, some gross bits and a few amusingly tweaked folk-tale tropes. (Graphic/fantasy hybrid. 10-12)Pub Date: Sept. 2, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-8037-4103-4
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Dial Books
Review Posted Online: June 9, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2014
Kibuishi gives his epic tale a hefty nudge toward its long-building climax while giving readers plenty of reasons to stick...
Stonekeeper Emily frees the elves from their monstrous masked ruler and sets out to rejoin her brother and mother in the series’ penultimate episode.
The multistranded storyline picks up with Emily’s return to the world of Alledia. Now a fiery, destructive phoenix struggling to regain control of her actions, Emily goes on to follow her brother Navin and allies as they battle invading shadows on the nearby world of Typhon, then switches back to human form for a climactic confrontation with the Elf King—in the course of which Emily rips off his mask to a chorus of “ERGH!! NO!!! GRAH! RRGH!! AAAGH!” to expose a rousingly hideous face. Cute animal heads on many figures (the result of a curse) and a scene with benevolent-looking trees provide at least a bit of relief from the grim expressions that all the human and humanoid elven characters almost invariably wear. But along with emphatic sound effects, the battle and action scenes in the cleanly drawn, if sometimes cramped, panels feature huge blasts of fire or energy, intricately detailed giant robots, weirdly eyeless monsters, and wild escapades aplenty to keep the pace’s pedal to the metal. Aliens and AIs in the cast come in a variety of hues, elves are a uniform gray, and except for a brief encounter between Emily and a slightly darker lad, the (uncursed) humans default to white.
Kibuishi gives his epic tale a hefty nudge toward its long-building climax while giving readers plenty of reasons to stick around for it. (Graphic fantasy. 10-12)Pub Date: Sept. 25, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-545-85002-5
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Graphix/Scholastic
Review Posted Online: July 23, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2018
The dice are rolling readers’ way in this third outing.
Sunny, in seventh grade, finds her score on the Groovy Meter taking some wild swings as her friends’ interests move in different directions.
In a motif that haunts her throughout, Sunny succumbs to a teen magazine’s personality quiz and sees her tally seesaw radically. Her BF Deb has suddenly switched focus to boys, clothes, and bands such as the Bee Gees (this is 1977)—dismissing trick-or-treating and wearing galoshes on rainy days as “babyish.” Meanwhile, Sunny takes delight in joining nerdy neighbors Lev, Brian, and Arun in regular sessions of Dungeons and Dragons (as a fighter character, so cool). The storytelling is predominantly visual in this episodic outing, with just occasional snatches of dialogue and pithy labels to fill in details or mark the passage of time; frequent reaction shots deftly capture Sunny’s feelings of being pulled this way and that. Tellingly, in the Holms’ panels (colored by Pien), Sunny’s depicted as significantly smaller than Deb, visually underscoring her developmental awkwardness. Deb’s comment that “we’re too old to be playing games like that” leads Sunny to drop out of the D&D circle and even go to the school’s staggeringly dull spring dance. Sunny’s mostly white circle of peers expands and becomes more diverse as she continues to navigate her way through the dark chambers and misty passages of early adolescence. Lev is an Orthodox Jew, Arun is South Asian, and Regina, another female friend, has brown skin.
The dice are rolling readers’ way in this third outing. (Graphic historical fiction. 10-12)Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-338-23314-8
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Graphix/Scholastic
Review Posted Online: June 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2019
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