A cute comic about how an artist came to draw and write his own comics at a young age. Great for tweens and teens interested in graphic novels! The art is alright, very cartoon-y but it shows a level of artistic talent that is obtainable for budding artists!

Read the introduction before reading this graphic novel! It is actually a great little story about how this comic came to be, and good insight as to how difficult it is to become an animator or comic illustrator. Onto the actual graphic novel: it was short but sweet. A fun little tale about a teen bullied into entering an abandoned Ren Faire where he encounters a knight looking for a dragon. Is he an actual knight or just a deranged, old employee of the fair? Is the dragon real? Like I said, read the story behind this comic. If I hadn't, my review would be a bit harsher. The story is pretty simple, the bullies are cliche, but there's certainly a lot of heart put into the creation of the characters.

Now here is a bizarre comic that I can totally get on board with! It's just so... ODD... yet hilarious! I loved the characters and the artist's ability to combine animals and humans and just make the strangest characters (Doctor Professor the Rhino with a mustache, the Owl Mafia in business suits, a cat lawyer in a jet pack). It's all unapologetic anarchy that certainly tickled my funny bone!

Another title read for the Mock Newbery election. This one definitely isn't the strongest candidate. It was cute! But that's all it had going for it. It did its best to bring all the characters and seemingly random events together in a big finale, but it felt a little forced to me and didn't build up but rather resolved itself neatly in a matter of pages. The narrator's dialogue was certainly different, and I could see this being a much more interesting audio book than a read-to-yourself book. Calling the readers "sports fans", silly exclamations of "But gosh by golly"! and a most silly way of talking, I don't know if kids would like it or be annoyed by it. I was on the edge of that predicament myself. Anyway, the writing style is great for grades 3-5, but the main character human is a ginormous, over 6 foot, strangely immature, 12 year old. It was an odd character. This whole book was odd. I dunno. *shrugs*

Hooray! Mewtwo!

This one I had to give all the stars to because it was a perfect artist biography with illustrations that children will love. Again, the artist doesn't over complicate her- wait, this is another Melissa Sweet! She's the illustrator for "Brave Girl", another Mock Caldecott title that I gave a high rating to. Huh, I guess I just really appreciate her style. She really seems to know how to draw people in with colorful drawings, mixed media swatches (this time it was paper swatches), and creating interesting, colorful spaces for the text. There were many more examples of her own text art with various quotes from Horace Pippin himself. I think in this case, the book was about an artist who just loved to draw and was at his happiest drawing anything. He also used art to convey the unhappy times in his life during the war. Perhaps the illustrator's child-like illustrations are meant to show young readers that they shouldn't be afraid to draw, no matter what their skill. All types of art are beautiful and to be appreciated. Even Melissa Sweet, whose figure drawing is no Reuben, but fun enough to get kids interested in art!