Poor Jonathan York, condemned to newfound self-confidence and awed listeners wherever he goes.
A night in the swamp converts a mild-mannered clerk into a wily yarn spinner in this hair-raising tribute to the life-changing power of stories.
In his debut, Merritt shows both a knack for evocative phrasing—“evening shadows had sidled in like predators seeking out the sick animals in a herd”—and a deft hand at crafting flamboyantly icky monsters in creepy settings. He sends his nerdy-looking protagonist into the murky gloom of Halfrock Swamp, where the price for a room at the only shelter, rickety Cankerbury Inn, is a story. A story? Jonathan York has none to tell. None, that is, until he’s cast out into the night and into the clutches of the extraordinarily toothy West Bleekport Gang, then swallowed by the dreaded Bogglemyre (to be ejected “with one great phlegm-rattling belch…like a human loogie”). Proving increasingly quick both of wit and feet, he escapes the terror-scenting Fear’im Gnott and numerous other hazards on the way back to the inn and, one yarn later, a well-earned night’s sleep. “Time will take many things from you,” the innkeeper declares, but “you’ll always have your story.” The atmospheric drawings not only offer an array of luxuriantly grotesque swamp residents to ogle, but sometimes even take over for the legibly hand-lettered narrative by expanding into wordless sequences and side tales.
Poor Jonathan York, condemned to newfound self-confidence and awed listeners wherever he goes. (Graphic fantasy. 11-14)Pub Date: Oct. 6, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4494-7100-2
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Andrews McMeel Publishing
Review Posted Online: July 14, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2015
At best, a poor substitute for Cliffs Notes and like slacker fare. (Graphic novel. 11-14)
A labored retelling of the classic survival tale in graphic format, heavily glossed and capped with multiple value-added mini-essays.
Along with capturing neither the original’s melodrama nor the stranded Crusoe’s MacGyver-esque ingenuity in making do, Graham’s version quickly waxes tedious thanks to forced inclusion of minor details and paraphrased rather than directly quoted dialogue in an artificially antiquated style (“You Friday. Me Master”). Frequent superscript numbers lead to often-superfluous footnotes: “Crusoe, a European, assumes that he is superior to other races. This attitude was usual at the time when the story was written.” Shoehorned into monotonous rows of small panels, the art battles for real estate with both dialogue balloons and boxed present-tense descriptions of what’s going on (the pictures themselves being rarely self-explanatory). Seven pages of closing matter cover topics from Defoe’s checkered career to stage and film versions of his masterpiece—and even feature an index for the convenience of assignment-driven readers.
At best, a poor substitute for Cliffs Notes and like slacker fare. (Graphic novel. 11-14)Pub Date: June 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-7641-4451-6
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Barron's
Review Posted Online: April 18, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
Opening episodes of a comic-book series created by an American teacher in Japan take a leap into chapter-book format, with only partial success. Resembling—in occasional illustrations—a button-eyed, juvenile Olive Oyl, Akiko, 10, is persuaded by a pair of aliens named Bip and Bop to climb out her high-rise bedroom’s window for a trip to M&M-shaped Planet Smoo, where Prince Fropstoppit has been kidnapped by widely feared villainness Alia Rellaport. Along with an assortment of contentious sidekicks, including brainy Mr. Beeba, Akiko battles Sky Pirates and video-game-style monsters in prolonged scenes of cartoony violence, displaying resilience, courage, and leadership ability, but not getting very far in her rescue attempt; in fact, the story cuts off so abruptly, with so little of the quest completed, and at a lull in the action to boot, that readers expecting a self-contained (forget complete) story are likely to feel cheated. (Fiction. 10-12)
Pub Date: Feb. 8, 2000
ISBN: 0-385-32724-2
Page Count: 162
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 1999
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