Kids aren’t just short adults; if you spend any time around them, you’ll learn that quickly. (This is also the reason why many people choose not to spend much time around children.) And, similarly, books for children aren’t the same as books for adults, nor are they adult books simplified or dumbed down.
This week, I’ve got five books – parts of three series – all of which are for kids in some way or another. I’ve got two books that are for “all ages” – and I’ll see what that actually means in this case – two that are solidly aimed at tweens, and one that’s for…well, a very particular audience, as far as I can tell, and I’ll get to that.
Dungeon Monstres, Vol. 2: The Dark Lord
Written by Joann Sfar and Lewis Trondheim; Art by Andreas and Stephane Blanquet
NBM, October 2008, $12.95
I don’t know how the books of the sprawling [[[Dungeon]]] saga are categorized or considered in their native France, but, over here, they get the not-always-helpful “all ages” label. The librarians I’ve talked to hate that label, since it’s inaccurate – no book is for all ages, and saying so usually means the person categorizing it is too lazy, greedy or ill-informed to make a more solid determination. As far as I can tell, the audience for these books is 10-up, or possibly 12-up if I’m being conservative. (Though I am not a librarian, particularly not a children/teen librarian, and those would be the experts in this case.)
The Dungeon series has proliferated into six subseries by this point – “The Early Years” is self-explanatory, “Zenith” has adventures of the duck Herbert at the height of the dungeon’s powers, “Twilight” tells of the downfall of the dungeon, “Monsters” is “great adventures of secondary characters,” “Parade” is set between the first two volumes of Zenith and has funny stories, and “Bonus” is so far unpublished over here – and I have examples of two of them here. (For further examples, see my reviews of Monstres Vol. 1: The Crying Giant and Zenith, Vol. 1: Duck Heart.)
And both of these are solid pieces of middle, with the humorously bittersweet, almost world-weary tone that’s characteristic of the Dungeon books and of nothing else I know for this audience. (The Dungeon books take place in a world that could have been written by Jack Vance – lots of adventure and jokes, against a dark and unforgiving background that implies an inevitable tragedy.) Back in Style starts with Herbert’s love, Isis, about to marry the dungeon’s Keeper – or supposedly about to do so, since it later becomes apparent that it’s all a plot to trick her father. But plots rarely go well for the heroes of Dungeon, and Herbert and his friends soon are heading for the dubious safety of Craftiwich, the duchy where he would be the heir, if he weren’t under an instant sentence of death if he reappears. And things get even more dangerous and difficult by the end – which is, again, more of a stopping point for a volume than an actual ending; none of the crises have been really resolved.
The [[[Monstres]]] volume, [[[The Dark Lord]]], is deliberately a sidebar to the main Twilight story – which I have to admit that I haven’t read yet – so it’s set many years later. The apparent villain and title character is the Grand Khan, an aged duck who looks very familiar and has a son who is the Duke of Craftiwich, but the hero of the first story is Marvin the Red, a bunny in a full-body powered suit of armor. He’s escorting a village of women to safety when the world stops spinning and breaks into thousands of islets floating in lava – and then he gets sidetracked by a beautiful cat-woman, who is the Grand Khan’s daughter. The second story here is from the Grand Khan’s point of view, and we learn that he’s a prisoner of the Dark Entity within him – until he briefly dies to set it free. And then things get much worse for him, as the various evil minions and forces that he’s been controlling begin to battle with each other and him for control of the pieces of the shattered planet. Again, there’s not a whole lot of ending – and doubly so, since each of these stories is a sidebar to Zenith where, presumably, the main action will take place.
Both of these books have a strong dose of adventure, in their very European fatalistic style. (Knowing what will happen to Herbert later in his life certainly makes his youthful adventures less enthralling.) The art is by various hands, though all in the same vein – Blanquet is the cartooniest and Boulet the most energetic, but they’re all similar to the look established by writer-artists Sfar and Trondheim in the earlier volumes. I wouldn’t suggest starting here, though – the best bet, I think, is to begin at the beginning of [[[Zenith]]] and work out from there.
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