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Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: The Graphic Novel, Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith, adapted by Tony Lee, illustrated by Cliff Richards - review

How many trends can you cash in on with one slender book? I mean - sure, nobody'd much heard of Quirk Books before Seth Grahame-Smith audaciously armed Elizabeth Bennet and Fitzwilliam Darcy with samurai swords and rifles, and now the indie publisher is huge, able to make distribution deals with whomever they want, so who can blame 'em for trotting out as many sequels, t-shirts and ancillary works as they can? Heck, I'm surprised they haven't put out a series of branded Easy Readers.

So it is with perverse pleasure that I announce that my cynical preconceptions about this graphic novel adaptation of a mashup classic were WRONGGGG. WRONNNGG like the clock that bongs out the time in the Hotel Denouement. WRONNGGG like Bella and Edward. Like Bruce Willis and Nancy Botwin in Red (god, that actress will kiss anybody, won't she?). WRONGGG:

 

The Genius Files: Mission Unstoppable by Dan Gutman - review

 

There are some authors, I freely admit, whose books I don't read. Not because I don't think I'll like them, or because I don't think I'd be able to recommend them, but because they are already appreciated and sought out by children. Dan Gutman is, of course, like this. Very few kids need my help discovering Dan Gutman.

When you check a kid's prior reading to get a bead on his/her likes and dislikes, there are certain books you can refer to. "What did you think of Harry Potter?" is a fair question - most every kid will at least know who Harry is. The Magic Tree House books (god bless 'em but don't make me read 'em) are in this category, but not a whole lot else. Wimpy Kid. And, of course, My Weird School. You can triangulate a kid's response to these known series to find where he falls on the axes of funny / mystery / fantasy. Hm. That graph would be an interesting thing to draw. Sounds like a job for xkcd.

The Night Owls by the Timony Twins - review

 

You know, there is so much right with this book, I'm just going to cut to bullet points.

• Single-page comics that work separately but legitimately hang together as a book-length arc. No, legitimately. I'm serious. Like a season of really good TV. And, like a season of really good TV, there are mini-arcs and single-pagers interspersed between and nested within the larger arcs. Comic books have always done this, but not all comic books have done it this well.

• The mashup of the supernatural and the Roaring Twenties is fun. Al Capone goes up against a guy with an enchanted lead pipe. A chorine in a Marx Brothers show is haunted by her dead husband. The Pied Piper of Hamlin is gigging at the Cotton Club (making him the Pied Piper of Harlem?).

Those That Wake by Jesse Karp - review

 

Oh I loved the first hundred pages of this book. Hundred-thirty, maybe. Paranoid and muffled, like a thriller in slow motion, like a ghost story set in the cement landscape of Roosevelt Island, it called to mind the frightened, frightening work of Philip K. Dick . Like Mulder's quieter, more desperate X-Files moments. The characters - and the reader - don't know what's going on, why everything around them keeps breaking and why everyone they encounter seems so hostile. The atmosphere is chilling and hopeless - magnetically written, it seeps into the reader's head like silence and inertia and entropy. Really good.

The Trouble With Chickens by Doreen Cronin, illustrations by Kevin Cornell - review

The trouble with chickens, in the experience of J.J., the hard-boiled, seen-it-all world-weary hound living out his post-glory days in a country farmyard, is that they're flighty. Untrustworthy. Calculating, manipulative, and either a lot smarter than him, or very very dumb.

The trouble with chickens, in my experience, is that everything wants to eat them and they don't run fast. Still kind of mourning our backyard birds.

How I Stole Johnny Depp's Alien Girlfriend by Gary Ghislain - review

 

Aaaand... this is a different type of YA novel. Another type that I like. There are no superheroes coming to terms with their newfound powers in it (except metaphorically), we are not living in a dystopic landscape (except metaphorically - the setting is mostly Paris), and there is no grief (not even metaphorically).

Instead we have an introverted, buttoned-down teenage boy who meets a fierce, wild-eyed girl, falls instantly in love, and is swept along by her insane momentum until he finds himself dog-bit, tattooed, guilty of criminal trespass, and listening to unfamiliar music.

The Freak Observer by Blythe Woolston - review

 

This is not a great YA novel. Sure it won the William C. Morris Debut Award for YA novels, up against two of my very favorite, most cherished YA novels in recent years, Lish McBride's Hold Me Closer, Necromancer and Karen Healey's Guardian of the Dead. Sure I'll urge every teen I see at the library or pass in the street to read it.

But The Freak Observer is not a great YA novel. The Freak Observer is a great novel, period.

Print Workshop: Hand-printing techniques + truly original projects by Christine Schmidt - review

I am anti-craft. I don't mind saying it. The thought of gathering a fistful of pipe cleaners, glue, wobbly eyes, and children all in one place and then encouraging them to interact is just... brrrrrr. Sounds scary and sticky and nerve-racking to me. I have friends who are good at that stuff. Also, there is school, and camp, so my children are not craft-deprived in sum. I know my strengths, and I abdicate my areas of weakness.

On the other hand...