The Adventures of John Blake: Mystery of the Ghost Ship By Phillip Pullman and Fred Fordham Scholastic Graphix, 160 pages, $17.99 There’s little original in Phillip Pullman’s first graphic novel. We have a mystery ship shrouded in fog. Time travel. A rich madman. A plucky heroine. Still, he manages to spice things up then stir…
Nnewts Book Two: The Rise of Herk By Doug TenNapel 202 pages, Scholastic Graphix, $19.99 (hc)/$10.99 (pb) I admire Doug TenNapel’s imagination and productivity. A new year and a new book from the cartoonist. This year’s offering is the second instalment in his new Nnewts universe, a follow-up to last year’s Escape from the Lizzarks….
Sunny Side Up By Jennifer L. Holm & Matthew Holm 216 pages, Scholastic Graphix, $12.99 Unlike so many of the offerings from the Scholastic Graphix line, this one requires paying attention to the structure as we jump around both time and place. The semiautobiographical memoir brings the timelines together as Sunny Lewin experiences her brother’s…
Tommysaurus Rex By Doug TenNapel Scholastic Graphix, 136 pages, $10.99 The concept of a boy and his canine best friend is nothing new at all and has provided us with countless heartwarming stories through the years. That the dog dies and is resurrected as a tyrannosaurus rex is a fresh spin on the story; one…
Cardboard By Doug TenNapel 283 pages, Scholastic Graphix, $12.99 I find Doug TenNapel a maddeningly inconsistent storyteller. He goes from the wonderful Ghostopolis to the disappointing Bad Island while delivering inventive graphics aided with strong color. Now we have Cardboard, which starts off with such promise and right around the halfway mark things spiral entirely…
Drama By Riana Telgemeier Scholastic Graphix, 233 pages, $10.99/$23.99 Despite being an adult, Raina Telgemeier has not forgotten what it was like to be an eighth grader when everything, from your body to your relationships, change with startling regularity. She demonstrated this in the wonderful memoir Smile and returns with Drama, a story across a…
Pandemonium Written by Chris Wooding, Art by Cassandra Diaz Scholastic Graphix, 160 pages, 12.99 (softcover)/$22.99 (hardcover) Chris Wooding is a successful young adult writer who has been carefully dipping his toe into the graphic novel world. In 2009, he blended words with illustrations in the largely successful Malice and is back this month with his…
Missile Mouse #1: The Star Crusher By Jake Parker Scholastic Graphix, 172 pages, $10.99 Introduced in the [[[Flight]]] anthology, M[[[Missile Mouse]]] is the plucky secret agent for the Galactic Security Agency, described as a “risk taker and a rule breaker”. Clad in his yellow and red flight suit, he performs missions that seem to earn…
The Good Neighbors: Book One – Kin By Holly Black and Ted Naifeh Scholastic Graphix, October 2008, $16.99 Holly Black made her name with [[[The Spiderwick Chronicles]]] and following that enormous hit, the pressure was no doubt on to follow it with something equally compelling. Fortunately, [[[The Good Neighbors]]] may well be that second hit….
