crayolabee's review
3.0
Cute comics from top-notch creators. Each story is pretty short and most of them feature familiar characters like Babymouse, Lunch Lady, and Lucy and Andy Neanderthal.
Each story varies depending on the creator, as it should be with a collection of vignettes. Unfortunately, no one gets quite enough pages for any of these stories to feel complete as short stories. Despite being authored by graphic novel creators, this is more a collection of comic strips than a graphic novel substitute. (This isn't a bad thing -- but it does mean kids who love the graphic novels by these same authors may end up still wanting more.)
Best stories for me were Cece Bell's Crazy Little Thing Called Lunch! and Nathan Hale's Lunch Bomb 1943. Oddest story for me was The Case of the Missing Science Project by Jason Shiga -- I appreciated the experimental format more than I thought I would, but I got stuck about two steps before the end and had to just search the pages to find the "good" end as I thought it should happen. I'm still not entirely sure of what the steps are supposed to be in order to get there, but at least I know what happens!
I would be curious to hand this to a graphic novel-loving kid to find out what they think. Overall, it didn't quite work for me, even as someone who likes the other graphic novels by the creators represented here. But I can see this being a good fit for kids who are desperate for more of these specific authors/artists.
Each story varies depending on the creator, as it should be with a collection of vignettes. Unfortunately, no one gets quite enough pages for any of these stories to feel complete as short stories. Despite being authored by graphic novel creators, this is more a collection of comic strips than a graphic novel substitute. (This isn't a bad thing -- but it does mean kids who love the graphic novels by these same authors may end up still wanting more.)
Best stories for me were Cece Bell's Crazy Little Thing Called Lunch! and Nathan Hale's Lunch Bomb 1943. Oddest story for me was The Case of the Missing Science Project by Jason Shiga -- I appreciated the experimental format more than I thought I would, but I got stuck about two steps before the end and had to just search the pages to find the "good" end as I thought it should happen. I'm still not entirely sure of what the steps are supposed to be in order to get there, but at least I know what happens!
I would be curious to hand this to a graphic novel-loving kid to find out what they think. Overall, it didn't quite work for me, even as someone who likes the other graphic novels by the creators represented here. But I can see this being a good fit for kids who are desperate for more of these specific authors/artists.
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