Tasha is absolutely thrilled to relive her Gramp Abominable’s stories of Camp Yeti, even if things will look a little different. Due to the low numbers of yetis, she’s convinced her parents to turn it into Camp Monster and welcome everyone, but things don’t go as expected.
The new campers—and Tasha’s cousin—don’t seem to appreciate the traditions or the changes at Camp Monster and there are lots of clashes from mischievous goblins using their magic to a nervous werewolf who doesn’t want to learn to swim. Even worse, there are rumors and signs of humans in the area! Will Tasha get to experience the joys of summer camp as she’s imagined or will the camp have to close down as soon as it’s reopened?
Falynn Koch has previously collaborated with Kate Messner, but this is her first fully fictional graphic novel; her previous titles included entries in the Science Comics and History Comics series. Her art is well-suited for middle grade fiction, leaning towards simple lines and colorful images. Koch introduces the diverse monsters at the beginning of the book, combining with Messner’s dialogue to create individual portraits of each creature. Tasha and her cousin Kami have fluffy white fur, curved yellow horns and yellow tongues, varying shades of blue skin on their face masks, hands, and feet. Kami wears a blue fedora, making it easy to tell the yetis apart. The campers include a pair of green goblin twins, with slightly different fur patterns, a nervous red werewolf, soccer-loving vampire in shades of purple, ballet-loving ogress with blonde hair and green skin, and a bright orange griffin who is eager to get swimming. The monsters are divided up into two cabins roughly along gender lines at the beginning of the story, but Koch does not portray them as conforming to human (or monster) gender norms throughout the book. They wear (or don’t wear) a variety of clothing, from a pink tutu to loose tunic-like shirts.
In this first book, the creators focus on getting to know the characters and Koch moves the story through various scenarios and running storylines at the camp that give readers a feel for each camper’s individual personality. Lupo, the werewolf, struggles to swim and while Coach Q, a mermaid, is understanding, the bulky sea serpent, Coach J, doesn’t really get it. Their confused faces and Lupo’s misery are shown in their features, regardless of fur and scales, as the campers interact with the lake in different ways. The most striking contrast is shown between Isabelle, the ballet-loving ogress and Vera, the soccer-loving vampire. Isabelle is clear on her love of all things pink and fancy, always shown in pink, her blonde hair in a bun, while Vera prefers more active clothing (all purple to match her hair and skin) and would rather be out playing soccer than doing her nails. On the other hand, Vera is a confirmed vegetarian and recoils from Isabelle’s collection of live spiders she keeps for snacks. Koch keeps the reader from stereotyping either of the two as she constantly introduces new facets of their personalities and interests while keeping their basic portrayal consistent.
The creators move the story through all the ups and downs of very different monsters trying to enjoy camp together until they end up faced with an enemy that makes them all scared – humans! To keep the camp from being shutdown due to the dangers of humans, the monsters will have to put aside their differences and work together, but do they even want to stay at camp? Messner includes letters home from each of the campers that fill out the story and keep the plot moving while Koch focuses on the humor and drama of the monsters’ daily interactions.
This story is full of pranks, jokes, and fantastical creatures while carrying an underlying message of diversity, acceptance, and cooperation. There are several layers of humor, making this appeal to a wide range of readers, and middle grade readers are unlikely to outgrow their interest in the characters before the next book in the series is released.
Recommend to young readers ready to move on from Kevin Sherry’s Yeti Files and those who enjoy light-hearted graphic novels with bright, appealing illustrations like The Investigators.
Camp Monster By Kate Messner Art by Falynn Koch Bloomsbury, 2026 ISBN: 9781547609413
The odd-couple trope in children’s books is most often seen in early readers and beginning chapters, from Elephant and Piggy to Pizza and Taco. Plots tend to shift towards a single protagonist or a group as they grow more complex, so it’s a clever creator who can maintain this dynamic in a graphic novel aimed at elementary-age students.
Pablo, a tall, skinny penguin, is perfectly happy living in the cold and snacking on krill pops. Splash, a short round penguin with a hat and scarf, is NOT. She wants to explore other places, preferably somewhere warm! She wants to go on… a vacation! When they fall into an underground lab and are captured by Professor O’Brain, they attempt to escape. A helpful “robot” invites them to hide inside of it… and turns out to be a time machine! Splash gets her vacation in a warm place after all – but it’s not what she imagined at all! She and Pablo will have to work together, combining Pablo’s patience and smarts and Splash’s enthusiasm and can-do attitude, if they’re going to make it home in one piece – and discover the secret plan of Professor O’Brain.
Dempsey’s art is bright and colorful, a good fit for her light-hearted and humorous story. The two penguins, with their unique body types, zip and bounce through the stark blue and whites of Antarctica, the warm underground yellows and browns of O’Brain’s lab, and the bright greens of their tropical destination. Time Bender, the time-traveling machine, is a round white orb, with a suspiciously grinning face and bland delivery of its lines, shown in an old-fashioned type. Professor O’Brain typifies a mad scientist, with a wild swirl of pink hair, pointed chin, and big goggles. She shows up at first in an ankle-length shirt dress, fuzzy slippers, and tool belt, and appears to be a villain, but by the end of the book her true colors show as she explains her plan with a friendly smile.
There is a lighter amount of text in this graphic novel, but it’s fairly complex, with puns, snarky jokes, and the penguin’s favorite exclamation, “for cod’s sake!” There’s also back matter with more in-depth and factual information about penguins, their time-travel destination, and Antarctica. Young readers who are fairly fluent, can handle different typefaces, and are comfortable with a thicker book but who prefer lighter, simpler storylines will be delighted to discover this goofy pair. This is also a good choice for kids who are reluctant to try longer or harder stories as the humor, fun illustrations, and rapid action will draw them into the story and encourage them to build their reading skills to decipher the story.
Pablo and Splash By Sheena Dempsey Bloomsbury, 2024 ISBN: 9781547616176
Company Age Rating: Matheson Memorial Library (public library, open to the public since June 2020)
NFNT Age Recommendation: Easy Readers (5-9), Middle Grade (7-11)
Albert is a 32-year-old professor, newly hired to teach theoretical physics at Charles University. Albert has many things on his mind as he enters the city by train. Chief among them are the happiness of his wife and two sons, who did not want to move from Zurich for the sake of his job. There are also money troubles, and the vicious rival determined to destroy his latest theory.
Franz is a 28-year-old insurance salesman, who still lives with his parents in their house in Prague. He dreams of being a writer but has yet to get anything published. Indeed, ignoring a few professional press releases, he has not really written anything.
Within 16 months, both Albert and Franz would change the way we viewed the world. For Albert was Albert Einstein, destined to become the most influential scientist of the 20th century. And Franz was Franz Kafka, whose writings would forever change literature. Two dreamers obsessed with finding the truth, albeit in different disciplines. Two men who, despite living in the same city for 16 months in similar social circles, have not been recorded to have ever spoken. Indeed, apart from one journal entry confirming Kafka attended one of Einstein’s lectures and a suggestion they might have met at the salon of Berta Fanta, there is no record of the two luminaries ever meeting, much less talking shop. But what if they had?
Einstein in Kafkaland is built around this conceit. It is well researched, with more footnotes and asides than a Terry Pratchett novel. However, despite the title, the focus is upon Einstein and his work. Very little of the book details Kafka’s activities at the same time. Indeed, most of Kafka’s appearances in the story are in the form of the Lewis Carroll characters that Ken Krimstein envisions tormenting Einstein as he tries to reconcile the Theory of Relativity with the critiques of his friends and enemies alike.
This is an absurd conceit, but an amusing one to those with the right intellectual mindset. Prague is made up as a Wonderland of sort, full of infectious madness that Einstein just barely escapes. This tone is set early on, as Einstein looks out the window of his new office and marvels at the happy people dancing in a nearby park. He feels quite hopeful about this display in his new home, until it is politely pointed out that the “park” is a sanitarium.
Krimstein’s art is as eclectic as the story. A mixture of sketches and watercolors brings the story to life. There is little constancy between the sketching styles, however, adding to the aura of madness, as Einstein goes down the rabbit hole trying to reimagine reality.
Einstein in Kafkaland is not rated for age by the publisher. The concepts it details mark this book as firmly written for adults, as few outside the arena of academia are likely to find it of interest. Even then, I question how many may find it comprehensible. There is, at least, nothing objectionable in terms of sex or violence. Indeed, there is no mention of sex or violence at all, beyond Einstein and his wife confirming their pacifist beliefs and a brief discussion of the daughter they had out of wedlock and put up for adoption.
Einstein in Kafkaland: How Albert Fell Down the Rabbit Hole and Came Up with the Universe By Ken Krimstein Bloomsbury, 2024 ISBN: 9781635579543
An innovative, dramatic graphic novel about the treacherous pursuit of the foundations of mathematics. This graphic novel recounts the spiritual odyssey of philosopher Bertrand Russell. In his agonized search for absolute truth, he crosses paths with thinkers like Gottlob Frege, David Hilbert & Kurt Gödel, & finds a passionate student in Ludwig Wittgenstein. But his most ambitious goal—to establish unshakable logical foundations of mathematics—continues to loom before him. Thru love & hate, peace & war, he persists in the mission threatening to claim both his career & happiness, finally driving him to the brink of insanity.
This story is at the same time a historical novel & an accessible explication of some of the biggest ideas of mathematics & modern philosophy. With rich characterizations & atmospheric artwork, it spins the pursuit of such ideas into a satisfying tale. Probing, layered, the book throws light on Russell’s inner struggles while setting them in the context of the timeless questions he tried to answer. At its heart, Logicomix is a story about the conflict between ideal rationality & the flawed fabric of reality.
(Publisher Description)
This title has not (yet) been reviewed by our staff, but it is a title that we highly recommend for the majority of libraries building collections for this age range.
Logicomix By Apostolos Doxiadis Christos H. Papadimitriou Art By Alecos Papadatos Annie Di Donna ISBN: 9781596914520 Bloomsbury, 2009 NFNT Age Recommendation: Adult (18+)
Super-smart Julian Calendar thinks starting junior high at a new school will mean he can shed his nerdy image-but then he meets Ben and Greta, two secret scientists like himself! The three form a secret club, complete with a high-tech lair. There, they can work to their hearts content on projects like the Stink-O-Meter, the Kablovsky Copter, and the Nightsneak Goggles. All that tinkering comes in handy when the trio discovers an evil scientist's dastardly plan to rob a museum. Can three inventors, armed with their wacky creations, hope to defeat this criminal mastermind?
Secret Science Alliance and the Copycat Crook By Eleanor Davis
ISBN: 9781599901428 Bloomsbury, 2009 NFNT Age Recommendation: Middle Grade (7-11)
In her first memoir, New Yorker cartoonist Roz Chast brings her signature wit to the topic of aging parents. Spanning the last several years of their lives and told through four-color cartoons, family photos, and documents, and a narrative as rife with laughs as it is with tears, Chast’s memoir is both comfort and comic relief for anyone experiencing the life-altering loss of elderly parents.
While the particulars are Chast-ian in their idiosyncrasies–an anxious father who had relied heavily on his wife for stability as he slipped into dementia and a former assistant principal mother whose overbearing personality had sidelined Roz for decades–the themes are universal: adult children accepting a parental role; aging and unstable parents leaving a family home for an institution; dealing with uncomfortable physical intimacies; and hiring strangers to provide the most personal care.
(Publisher description)
Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant? By Roz Chast ISBN: 9781632861016 Bloomsbury, 2016 NFNT Age Recommendation: Adult (18+)
Rapunzel escapes her tower-prison all on her own, only to discover a world beyond what she’d ever known before. Determined to rescue her real mother and to seek revenge on her kidnapper would-be mother, Rapunzel and her very long braids team up with Jack (of Giant killing fame) and together they preform daring deeds and rescues all over the western landscape, eventually winning the justice they so well deserve. (Publisher Description)
Rapunzel’s Revenge By Shannon Hale Dean Hale Art by Nathan Hale ISBN: 9781599900704 Bloomsbury, 2008 NFNT Age Recommendation: Middle Grade (7-11)
Not every family is perfect. We may have embarrassing parents, annoying relatives, clueless cousins, and the occasional black sheep, but they can also be as normal as you are. Plus, you can’t choose who you are related to—barring an abusive situation, you just need to learn to cope with them and love them in your own way.
New Yorker cartoonist Roz Chast relates how she had coped with the last years of her parents’ lives in her graphic memoir Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant?. All her life, her parents have caused her stress and frustration, whether it be something insignificant like house cleaning or something life-threatening like their health and well-being. When they reached their nineties, the decline of their physical health meant that Chast had to deal with a lot more frustrations than she was used to, while also coming to terms with their mortality. But through her experiences, the reader comes to understand that even if your relationship with your parents is strained or complicated, you can still find the time to care for them and show how much they mean to you.
With her own wit and style, Chast has created a memorable memoir of familial struggles and love. She takes moments of her parents’ questionable behavior and adds comedic flair to them using exaggerated facial expressions and inner monologue; whether it be her father’s obsession with old bank books or her mother’s distrust of doctors. Her artistic style of simple cartoon drawings works well with these darkly humorous moments. The comic scenes she includes are used to convey her personal emotions as she speaks about her struggles with her parents. The narrative text is written in longhand and includes family photos, adding another personal touch. The writing and artwork work very well together, creating a funny yet heartwarming tale about family relations and preparations for death.
Chast’s personal reflection will appeal to those who enjoy memoirs of ordinary but relatable family life. Even those who are not familiar with the graphic novel format may want to give this book a try. With its deeply personal format and witty humor, Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant? is a great addition for any library’s adult graphic novel collection.
Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant? by Roz Chast ISBN: 9781632861016 Bloomsbury, 2016
Proimos is known for his snarky, quirky stories, from the wacky Johnny Mutton to picture books like Swim Swim and Todd’s TV. This story is no exception, except that it’s possibly stranger than any of his previous works.
Weird things are happening outdoors, but pet dogs Brownie and Apollo are more concerned with who gets to lie on the couch, who’s a mutt, and when they’ll get fed. But then the water bowl goes dry and it seems it’s been an awfully long time since they were fed. Finally, the two realize they must go and find the people. But how to get out? Will licking the doorknob do the trick? Spoiler Alert: Licking the doorknob does not do the trick, but they get out anyway! Now they’re outside and free and they will find the people and there will be food and…uh-oh, things are not right at all. Fortunately, there are lots of other dogs around for them to team up with. Unfortunately, not all of them are friendly. Will they ever find out what happened to the people? Will they survive eating 2,374 Twonkies cakes? Who will be top dog in the climactic battle of the grocery store?
Each page features a single black and white illustration, some divided into smaller panels, but most are a single panel. Instead of chapters, the book is divided into “scenes” and each one is introduced by a plain gray panel with the scene number on it. This definitely gives the book a movie-like feel, with each scene being more of a short vignette than a continuation of the overall plot. The art style is very scribbly, with all of the dogs having distinctive long noses and short legs, but varied body sizes. There is not a lot of detail in the backgrounds, just enough to let you know when the dogs are inside, outside, or at the grocery store. It can be difficult to keep track of which dog is speaking, especially when they have similar exaggerated facial features. The cartoon illustrations are funny, but I found myself wanting more detail in the illustrations as a whole, and a better idea of what was going on in the story.
I felt like this was really supposed to be funny, but ultimately it just wasn’t. It was very quirky and there were lots of jokes, like the flea giving military advice from Sun Tzu’s The Art of War, or Brownie’s completely clueless behavior in licking doorknobs to make doors open. The scenery was very desolate and the black and white art seemed to make the art even more depressing overall. I felt like I was missing something that would make this spoof of apocalyptic fiction actually humorous and not so existential. Middle grade kids who like really snarky, off the wall humor and are familiar with the tropes of apocalyptic movies and books will probably appreciate this, but it’s not something I would expect to find an immediate audience for in my library.
Apocalypse Bow Wow by James Proimos III Art by James Proimos Jr. ISBN: 9781619634428 Bloomsbury, 2015 Publisher Age Rating: 8-12
I’ve put off writing this review in hopes that I might eventually develop strong feelings about the book. After several weeks, I must accept that this isn’t going to happen. Seymour Chwast is a very well respected designer and illustrator and Dante’s Divine Comedy is a classic of western literature, but the former’s graphic novel adaptation of the latter has elicited nothing more than a noncommittal shrug. I imagine Chwast could provide an illustration of the hellish punishment suffered by the apathetic, but I’m not driven to go looking for it.
In the original poem, Renaissance-era Italian poet Dante Alighieri describes his travels through hell, purgatory, and heaven, guided first by the poet Virgil and then by Dante’s lost love Beatrice. It’s a hearty mix of theology, social commentary, history, and politics. I read the first book, The Inferno, in a classics class many years ago. I quite enjoyed the sensationally grisly descriptions of sinners’ punishments (carefully tailored to their earthly transgressions) and learned a lot from the various historical figures who showed up in Dante’s narrative (often being punished for some mortal sin, adding a bit of snarky enjoyment).
It’s quite understandable that Chwast does away with Dante’s poetic descriptions of the sights and spectacles of the afterlife; in a graphic novel we expect that job to be done by the art. Unfortunately, Chwast’s black and white line art comes up short. It’s carefully planned and well executed but rather static and lacking in emotional resonance. It conveys neither the visceral horror of hell nor the radiant glory of heaven. Additionally, Chwast’s preference for large tableaux rather than sequential panels undermines any sense of graphical narrative. Many of his pages would work well as posters or as illustrations to the poem, but they fail to form a cohesive whole as a graphic novel. The waters are muddied further by Chwast’s choice to depict most characters in 1920s fashions. Dante wears a trenchcoat and fedora while Virgil sports a bowler and pencil-thin mustache. One can draw parallels between the roaring twenties and the Italian Renaissance, but I wasn’t ever sure why Chwast was doing so.
With its descriptive duties stripped away, the text serves mostly to deliver a dry play-by-play of plot points and character names. It adds clarity, but not a lot of flavor or interest. The blank, declarative language carefully labels each moment, but does nothing to string the moments together or create narrative structure. With neither the art nor the text providing propulsion, things bog down after a while.
Of course, one of my problems is out of Chwast’s control; I lack the historical knowledge necessary to understand all of Dante’s references. When I read The Inferno I had copious annotations to help me along. I might recommend this book to any Dante scholar with enough background knowledge to render such annotations unnecessary. Their passion for the original might warm their feelings toward this adaptation. However, that’s a fairly small group and I’m not sure how many of them use my library.
Dante’s Divine Comedy: A Graphic Adaptation by Seymour Chwast ISBN: 9781608190843 Bloomsbury USA, 2010
low numbers of yetis, she’s convinced her parents to turn it into Camp Monster and welcome everyone, but things don’t go as expected.
and Taco. Plots tend to shift towards a single protagonist or a group as they grow more complex, so it’s a clever creator who can maintain this dynamic in a graphic novel aimed at elementary-age students.
Prague. April 1, 1911.
Not every family is perfect. We may have embarrassing parents, annoying relatives, clueless cousins, and the occasional black sheep, but they can also be as normal as you are. Plus, you can’t choose who you are related to—barring an abusive situation, you just need to learn to cope with them and love them in your own way.
Proimos is known for his snarky, quirky stories, from the wacky Johnny Mutton to picture books like Swim Swim and Todd’s TV. This story is no exception, except that it’s possibly stranger than any of his previous works.
