Graphic Novel: Charlaine Harris' Grave Sight, Part 1

I've decided that I wish every book on the planet came in graphic novel format. Then, I would actually be able to finish a book in a reasonable amount of time! :-) I read an e-galley of Charlaine Harris' Grave Sight graphic novel in a day! The experience was fantastic. It's taken me three weeks to try and get through the current book I'm reading and it frustrates me that I can't find the time to read it more, and it's a good book.

I have read Harris' second Harper Connelly book, Grave Surprise and I liked it. I've had the paperback edition of Grave Sight sitting on my shelf for a couple years and haven't been able to get to it. I was very excited to receive an e-galley of the graphic novel. The only downside, it was was just Part 1! Harris' book seems well adapted for graphic novel. And for me, someone who only has a few minutes a day to read, it's kind of nice getting to the nitty gritty of the story and bypassing all the extraneous description.

In this series, Harper Connelly was struck by lightning as a child. This event caused her to be able to have conversations dead bodies. She is able to find them by "listening" to them. They are also able to tell her how they died. This proves very helpful in missing persons and cold cases. Her brother Tolliver comes along for the ride as her manager of sorts and bodyguard. She has created a business out of finding dead bodies. She is hired either by the police or random people who are looking for loved ones.

Definitely recommend this for a speedy read for adults. Just wish I had Part 2 in e-galley as well!

Source disclosure: I received e-galley from the publisher through netgalley.com.

Superheroes: A Pop-up Book

I was absolutely delighted when I received a box in the mail from Little Brown and Company! It had some fun stuff inside that I hope to review in the next couple months. But there was one treasure in there that could not wait! I had to get this up, and it would have been posted sooner except I had to take photos of this AMAZING book!

Now, let's preface this by saying, I don't know the first thing about superheroes aside from watching the first couple Superman movies back in the day and the first couple Batman movies in the '90's. Oh, and I did happen to watch reruns of the original Batman television show when I was a kid in the summer when I visited my dad. I suppose, I might have a few Wonder Woman episodes stored somewhere in the deep recesses of my mind. Heh....maybe, I actually have more Superhero knowledge than I thought! ;-)

But now, I have a son. And I do feel like I will eventually have to be up on my Superhero speak. This book will certainly send me on my way!

There are about 6 or 7 different pop-up pages, each featuring a superhero. For instance, the first page is Superman.Each page contains smaller pop-ups on the side discussing various villains and superpowers. Here's an example:
The details in the pop-ups are incredible. Here's the Wonder Woman page and a detail:

Her lasso is made out of gold cord! This is the detail that really blew me away! I will admit, I'm relatively new to pop-up books so maybe many of them have real 3-dimensional details out of materials different than paper. But I couldn't believe it when I opened this page.

Then the grand finale of the book:
A collage of all the superheroes on one page, complete with little numbers and a legend identifying each character.

Still have a little boy to buy a gift for this week? This would be PERFECT! Run out and get it NOW! :-)

Source disclosure: Received unsolicited from the publisher: Little Brown & Company.

Alison Dare, Little Miss Adventures

Alison Dare is not your average twelve-year-old. She's the daughter of a world-famous archaeologist...and a superhero called the Blue Scarab. On top of that, her uncle is an international superspy. So the three adventures in this delightful graphic novel are going to be over-the-top. The first adventure is Alison Dare and the Arabian Knights, in which a bored Alison traveling with her mother finds a genie. Her first wish? To bring her friends/sidekicks Wendy and Dot to liven up the dull desert. As things always go with genies, the girls' wishes don't end up exactly as they had planned. In the second, Alison Dare and the Secret of the Blue Scarab, we learn more about Alison's family, including how her parents met and how a mild-mannered librarian becomes the Blue Scarab. In the third, Alison Dare and the Mummy Child, Alison helps her mother when her arch-nemesis Baron von Baron comes to steal a mummy child from the museum.

These stories were a quick read, but so much fun, I'd look for more. In fact, a second volume, Alison Dare, The Heart of the Maiden, is available, and sounds like a fun summer read. I'd recommend Alison's adventures to graphic novel fans, fans of Indiana Jones or Lara Croft, and to reluctant readers who would be drawn in by a spunky heroine in over-the-top adventures.

Source disclosure (hi, FTC!): I received a copy of this book from the publisher through LibraryThing's Early Reviewers program.

Graphic Novel Snippets

I joined the Graphic Novel Challenge this year. I think I will be a little more successful with this reading challenge than I was with the Art History Reading Challenge from last year. Crossing my fingers anyway. I'm entering at the Intermediate level where I just have to read 3-10 graphic novels this year. Well, I've already read three, so I guess I can't lose!

I requested Calamity Jack from the publisher when I saw it listed on someone else's blog. I really LOVED Rapunzel's Revenge by Shannon and Dean Hale so I was very curious about Jack's side of the story. While this chapter of the story was an interesting retelling of the Jack and the Beanstalk story, I wasn't quite as riveted as I was with Rapunzel's story. I think part of that is that I loved Rapunzel's character and how strong the Hales portrayed her. She definitely plays the role of sidekick in Calamity Jack and there is much more of a love story going on in this one as well. While I didn't respond to this one as much as the first, it is still entertaining with a few twists and turns that keep the reader focused. I think it would be great for a reluctant reader (though I believe that with just about all graphic novels) and boys might be a little more interested in this one, just because of the main character as well as the storyline of Jack overcoming the giants.
Source disclosure: I requested a copy directly from the publisher for review.

Zeus: King of the Gods is the first in a planned eleven-part series by George O'Connor called Olympians. This graphic novel starts from the very beginning of Greek Mythology talking about the Titans and eventually getting to Zeus's (whose father was the Titan Cronus) story. The story continues through Zeus defeating his father. O'Connor eludes to other books in the series in a couple places (like the story of Aphrodite) and there is a great Author Note at the end. I definitely recommend this one and hope the rest of the series is as fun as Zeus. I think this (and the rest of the series) would be a great introduction for any young readers who might be interested in Rick Riordan's Percy Jackson series but might need or want some background on Greek Mythology first. Or maybe a great complement along with reading the Percy Jackson series.
Source Disclosure: The publisher sent a copy of this to me.

This young adult memoir by David Small depicts his childhood in images (and a few words). David was subjected to repeated x-rays from his father (a radiologist) as a treatment for his sinus issues as a small child. All the exposure to radiation caused David to get cancer in his throat as a young teen and was subjected to an operation that left him with one vocal cord and a huge scar on his throat.

Though this is categorized as young adult and touted as a coming-of-age story, I would be hesitant to have anyone younger than 15 or 16 or so read it. Many parts of the story would be difficult for a young reader. David's parents lie to him about his cancer, he finds his mother in bed with another woman when he's fifteen, his grandmother tries to burn down her house with his grandfather inside, and I'm sure there's more that I can't remember off the top of my head. While this book sounds disturbing (and it is), it's also really interesting because of the graphic novel medium the author chose to use.
Source disclosure: I borrowed this book from the library.

Middle-Grade Musings

Whew! Almost completely caught up on reviews now.

The Unusual Mind of Vincent Shadow by Tim Kehoe was a very fun, fast book. I honestly can't remember if I requested this book through Shelf Awareness or if it was just randomly sent to me by the author. But, I sure did enjoy this book! Vincent has a quirky brain that leaves him with blackouts but gives him brilliant ideas for toy inventions! He has a top secret lab in the back of his closet that no one knows about. He tinkers whenever he can though he rarely gets his inventions to work the way he wants.
He moves to a new city and really likes one of his new teachers who encourages him to enter a toy invention contest. And one of Vincent's inventions is chosen to go to the national contest!

You know I like to support local authors and Tim Kehoe lives in Minnesota with his family. Always fun to read a new book set where you live! I believe this book is the first in a series starring Vincent. I recommend this book to reluctant readers for its short chapters and illustrations. I think it would be particularly interesting to boys as well (or really anyone!!). I will definitely read the next one.
Source disclosure: I believe through Shelf Awareness from the publisher.

39 Clues: Books 4 & 5: Not much to say here. The adventure continues with Amy and Dan continuing to get themselves into various predicaments with members of the Cahill family. I continue to enjoy these books as they move along. I particularly like that they only focus on a few of the family members in each book. And it seems that Dan and Amy are growing up and maturing through the course of their adventure. It's also fun to see which countries their travels take them to and which family members do actually help them out.
Source disclosure: I purchased both of these books.

The graphic novel Good As Lily is actually a Young Adult title, but I didn't have enough to say to warrant its own review. I actually really enjoyed this one. High schooler Grace wakes up one morning to meet her 6 year old self, as well as 30-year old and 70-year old versions of herself. The four Graces go through the week together as High School Grace tries to figure out what to do with the other Lilys or how to help them. She starts to figure out what each of them needs. The title comes from Grace losing her sister Lily at a young age and always feeling like she never lives up to Lily's memory.
Source disclosure: Borrowed this book from the library.

The Museum Vaults: Excerpts from the Journal of an Expert

I used this graphic novel by Marc-Antoine Mathieu as a quick entry for the Art History Reading Challenge. Yes, I do plan to actually read an adult fiction or nonfiction book for this challenge. But just haven't gotten there yet. :-)

I enjoyed the three other graphic novels I've read in the last year so I thought this would be a fun addition to my reading for this challenge. The basic storyline follows Monsieur Volumer, an expert in his field of indexing, cataloging, and evaluating museum collections as he travels through the Museum. He enters the Museum and begins to go through its holdings, making his way through each and every storage area, traveling deeper and deeper into the depths of the museum. This very short book (at 60 pages) is full of fun and sarcastic humor with regard to museums and the art world. For example, the first few pages discuss how the lower levels of a museum all look the same and you can get lost in the similar hallways, but that you eventually "end up getting used to it all." (page 8). Anyone who has ever worked in the basement of a standard museum will chuckle at this as yes, most museums have limestone, solid foundations, built to withstand all. And most are all painted exactly the same and seem to be a maze of hallways with access doors. Later in the book, fun is poked at "the archives service" or the mountains and mountains of paperwork found in a museum. And so it goes on from there.

The philosophy of art is also discussed throughout the book with regard to paintings and what truly is art. Are reproductions of art art within themselves? or just the original masterpiece? There is one section where a gentlemen is obviously referencing the Mona Lisa without really saying it. He discusses how the invention of the camera obscura really changed the way art was viewed. He said there were many copies of different paintings and the staff would change them out. He used the example of one painting of a woman in which they had many copies each with a different facial expression. He would change them out in the gallery periodically and people would be curious about her change of expression, never knowing that the painting had actually been changed. But someone took a photo of the painting where she is smiling slightly, and it ended up in an art book. He's had to leave that one up ever since. He claims it's a shame that no one will ever see the other paintings again. Obviously this has never happened, and its meant to be funny. I really got a kick out of how creative Mathieu was in getting his points across about the irony of art and the museum world.

Now, all that being said, the book was a bit jumpy, moving quickly from topic to topic, never expanding long on anything. And I'm not sure someone without a museum or art background would really enjoy this book at all. I give it four stars because I loved how accurate he was with his museum references, but I think this would be a 2.5 or a 3 out of five stars for someone without this kind of background. But then again, I'm not sure why someone would be drawn to a book like this if they weren't interested in art and museums. So that shouldn't really be a problem. :-)

Rapunzel's Revenge by Shannon and Dean Hale

This graphic novel by Shannon and Dean Hale was all over the book blogosphere last year. I made note of it but sort of forgot about it until I happened to go to the library and they had it sitting on display as a new acquisition. I couldn't resist checking it out after I thumbed through it. And it proved to be the perfect thing for me to read on the airplane.

In short, Rapunzel is locked away in a tree by her evil "Mother" (we find out later it is not her real mother) for four years. She eventually uses her hair to help escape and begins a rootin' tootin' adventure with Jack (from Jack and the Beanstalk) as her sidekick.

I thought the interpretation of the Rapunzel story was very creative and I loved that Jack was her sidekick. I wasn’t sure I was going to be into this book because of the Western take on it. I worked in a Western history museum for three years and kind of overdosed on all things western. But I should have known better. I really loved it! I certainly hope they stock this book in their gift shop. It would fit in so well! Rapunzel is shown as a very strong female character that can show Jack a thing or two. I highly recommend this one for reluctant readers, or a fun, quick, entertaining read for anyone!

Others who have reviewed this book:
Book Moot
Abby the Librarian
Maw Books Blog

Odds and Ends

I have a bunch of book related thoughts running around in my head so I thought I would just throw them into a post today.

I picked up Janes in Love by Cecil Castellucci at the library the other day. This is the sequel to the graphic novel The Plain Janes. In this installment, the Janes are all crushing on different guys and trying to figure out how to ask them to a dance at school. Their art collective, P.L.A.I.N. is still causing an uproar in the community and Jane applies for a federal grant to make their group legitimate. While I enjoyed this book too, I really liked the first one more. I can’t really put my finger on why I wasn’t quite as fond of this one. It just didn’t strike me quite the same way. If you enjoyed The Plain Janes, you should still pick this one up too. It’s worth the hour (or less) it might take you to get through it.

On another graphic novel note. While we were at story time this week at Barnes and Noble, I noticed a “Comics and Manga” shelving section in the Children’s area. I hadn’t paid any attention to this before, but I looked through the selection while Ella was working on her coloring sheet. There is quite an array of graphic novels for grades 3-7. I was amazed! There are Babysitter’s Club and Nancy Drew mysteries in graphic novel format! There’s a whole series of Amelia’s Notebooks by Marissa Moss that look really fun. Moss also has one called Max’s Logbook for younger male readers (perhaps a nice a follow-up book to the Wimpy Kid series?). I was just really intrigued at the array of graphic novels available to this age group. And what a great thing for reluctant readers! They had a series called Phonics Comics that I’m going to look into for my five year old. She loves to “read” and wants more than anything to be able to read on her own but she’s just not quite there yet. So I think she might really like the Phonics Comics because she can look at the pictures and “read” the story. I also ran across a graphic novelization of Artemis Fowl. I’ve read the first couple in this series and own them all. I requested the graphic novel from the library. I think it will be fun to see what how the story is in a visual format.

Okay enough about graphic novels.

I received my Bookmarks Magazine in the mail yesterday. I always love getting this magazine. I find some time when I can be uninterrupted, sit in my comfy chair with a cup of tea and look through it marking the books I’d like to add to my TBR list. Well, this time I was very disappointed! I had already heard of almost all the general fiction books they were reviewing! I couldn’t believe it, almost all of them were LibraryThing Early Reviewer books, or on other ARC sites. Or I’ve read about them on the many book blogs I have in my Google Reader. This is interesting to me for a couple of reasons. One, I’m really surprised at how knowledgeable I’ve become about the book world just by paying attention to more book blogs than I used to (LOVE my Google Reader!) and by participating in early reviewer programs. I also think this says A LOT about marketing in the book world and what a GIANT part book blogs and book review websites, such as LibraryThing and GoodReads, play in spreading the word about an upcoming book. You can now hear about new books months in advance! In the past, I think many times you didn’t hear about new books coming out except maybe a month or a few weeks in advance. It’s just really interesting to me that we are witnessing an evolution in the book world first hand. I guess I’ll hang in there for a couple more issues of Bookmarks, but I might have to consider letting my subscription go….

Back to High School

I have been interested in checking out graphic novels lately. I see them reviewed here and there in the blogosphere (almost always highly rated) and the idea of a graphic novel that is not based on a superhero intrigues me. The Plain Janes by Cecil Castellucci has popped up on several blogs I read so I thought I would start there.

The book starts out with high-schooler Jane being a victim in a random bombing in Metro City, similar to the 9/11 attack. She becomes attached to another victim, John Doe, who is in a coma, visiting him on a regular basis. Her parents now scared that Metro City is unsafe, move Jane to a suburban neighborhood far away. She tries to fly under the radar in her new school just waiting to graduate so she can get back to the big city. Refusing to assimilate into the popular group, she chooses to sit at a lunch table filled with more Janes (Jayne, Jane, and Polly Jane). Inspired by John Doe's sketchbook entitled "Art Saves", Main Jane (as she becomes known) decides to do an art installation in a construction site. She enlists the help of the other Janes who each bring their own attributes to the installation. They form P.L.A.I.N. (People Loving Art In Neighborhoods). With each covert installation, the town gets more worked up seeing the art as vandalism and even equating it to terrorist attacks. Curfews and rules try to curb P.L.A.I.N., but the girls somehow get around them all, until the end. I really enjoyed this and I think its an interesting commentary on art installations. At my small college, each spring we would find various art installations pop up around campus, they always provoked spirited discussions about what art really is. In the Plain Janes, I think P.L.A.I.N. becomes a way to help Main Jane heal emotionally from her experience in Metro City. The sequel, Janes in Love just came out September 23rd. Publisher Minx Books, a division of DC Comics, has several other titles similar to this one. These might be good choices for reluctant female middle school age readers (the publisher suggests grades 7-10). Unfortunately, in looking around at Minx Books on the internet, I came across this article detailing the failure of Minx. It's really too bad they couldn't give it a go awhile longer. I think it is a really neat idea to create graphic novels geared toward girls.

Other reviews of The Plain Janes can be found here: Girl Detective, The Hidden Side of a Leaf, So Many Books, So Little Time, and Presenting Lenore.

Although, I was attempting to link two books with the theme of high school, this next book is drastically different from Plain Janes. I recently finished The Power of Three by Laura Lippman, an adult crime novel. Lippman writes the Tess Monaghan series, which I haven't read, but would like to get to some day. The Power of Three is one of her stand alone books. We open with one girl hiding a gun in her backpack. Then, there is a school shooting. One girl is dead, one is injured in her foot, and the third (presumably the shooter) a botched suicide attempt. The whole book centers around trying to figure out what exactly happened in the bathroom to make three best friends become victims/enemies. There are flashbacks throughout the book to see the girls' friendship throughout the past ten years. Lippman does a wonderful job with character development. I feel like we really get a sense of who each of these girls are, what makes them different from each other and the rest of the high school crowd. Lippman guides us along in the investigation of the shooting letting us in on secrets here and there. I spent much of the book thinking I could figure it all out and I somewhat did, but I think I did at the pace that Lippman wanted her readers to figure it out. It was nicely predictable. And there was a tiny bit of a twist at the end as to who the "fourth girl" really was when the shooting took place. Any fans of Harlan Coben would most likely really enjoy this one. I found Lippman to sort of be a female version of Coben. I still have What the Dead Know sitting on my shelf and I'm looking forward to getting to that one as well.