A Review of Explorer: The Mystery Boxes, edited by Kazu Kibuishi

You may have heard the name Kazu Kibuishi before. Kibuishi is the creator of the Amulet series. (See my review of Book 1 here.) Now Kibuishi has put together an intriguing graphic anthology. Apparently he asked each graphic artist to start with the idea of a mysterious box and go from there. Here's a look at what they came up with:


"Under the Floorboards" by Emily Carroll

A girl finds a little wax doll in a box under the floorboards. At first the doll helps her with her chores, but then it starts causing trouble for her—and growing bigger. How will she stop the doll before it ruins and maybe even takes over her life?


"Spring Cleaning" by Dave Roman and Raina Telgemeier

When Oliver's dad tells him to clean out his closet, he finds an odd puzzle box that he tries to sell online. Instantly wizards start showing up at the house, trying to buy the box. He runs to his friend's house, where further online research shows the probable origin of the box. Now they just have to figure out what to do with it.


"The Keeper's Treasure" by Jason Caffoe

A young treasure seeker braves dangers to find a secret maze and the monstrous man who guards it. But is he really our hero? The keeper of the treasure seems to value imagination over the gleam of gold. The treasure seeker leaves, satisfied, but none the wiser, while readers might find some real wisdom in the treasure keeper's approach to life.


"The Butter Thief" by Rad Sechrist

A young Japanese girl's grandmother captures the little spirit who's been stealing butter from the family kitchen in a box and buries it out in the backyard. The girl goes out that night to dig up the box and see what's inside, but the angry spirit turns her into a being as small as he is. Only the promise of more butter from the kitchen might entice him to turn her back...


"The Soldier's Daughter" by Stuart Livingston

When Clara and her brother get the awful letter telling them their soldier father has been killed in the war, Clara is determined to kill her father's killer in revenge. Her brother questions her choice, so she calls him a coward. But instead of revenge, Clara finds a mysterious man with an even more mysterious box—and one more chance to talk to her father.


"Whatzit" by Johane Matte

Deet's grandpa is going to give him a special job in his intergalactic factory, checking off inventory before the product ships. But some of the more senior employees aren't too thrilled about Deet's promotion, and Deet finds an odd box that's not on his list. When he opens it, the creatures inside escape in a Pandora's pandemonium of knocking over still more boxes. Wait till you find out what the product is, let alone how Deet manages to solve his problem.


"The Escape Option" by Kazu Kibuishi

Kibuishi concludes the collection with a short fable about a boy who is offered the chance to escape the destruction of Earth. Only the destruction isn't a question of alien attack, it's a matter of environmental disaster. James makes an unpredictable choice, which is just as well. Turns out the alien who found him wasn't telling him everything he knows.


Half the fun of reading this book is seeing the styles of the different illustrators. We get more realistic approaches like Caffoe's and Kibuishi's, along with more cartoonish work from artists such as Matte and Roman and Telgemeier. Since all of the other illustrators use ink outlines, it's nice to see what Sechrist does without them. Matte's work has a bright, Loony Tunes vibe, while Carroll's and Caffoe's are hauntingly atmospheric. All of the artists are highly accomplished, and a look at the thumbnail bios on the last page explains why. It looks like most of them work together in animation at places like Dreamworks, and I'm sure you've heard of Raina Telgemeier's award-winning graphic novel, Smile.

In terms of storytelling, Caffoe's, Livingston's, and Kibuishi's segments are the most didactic, but the stories are still worth reading and hold together well—especially Caffoe's with its delicate humor. You'll have seen the basic plot of "Under the Floorboards" before, but Carroll's artwork and the final solution are satisfyingly fresh. For fun and entertainment, nothing beats the plot and dialogue of "Spring Cleaning," though "Whatzit" comes close. And "The Butter Thief" offers us a nice new take on both the character of the pesky house elf and what happens when a child magically shrinks.

This book could obviously be used as a set of story prompts for students to write and illustrate their own tales about a magic box. The very different takes on the premise in Explorer will show students that they, too, can come up with an all-new approach to the magic box story. The book could also be used to discuss concepts like tone and theme, which are sometimes difficult for students to grasp.

But you don't have to be a teacher to appreciate the artistry of Explorer: The Mystery Boxes. Just a fan of good graphic art and storytelling.

Note: Illustration above left is from "The Keeper's Treasure" by Jason Caffoe.

A Review of Pandemonium by Chris Wooding and Cassandra Diaz

My favorite thing about the relatively recent incursion of the graphic novel into children's literature is that for some reason the quality has been very high—as compared to, say, movies. With the exception of Pixar, most movie studios make a lot of bombs. But look at the current crop of graphic novels for kids, and you'll find a lot more success stories than failures. (My theory is that they're so much trouble to make that no one dreams of signing off on them unless they're really terrific, but I'm open to suggestions.) At any rate, Pandemonium is another winner.

Wooding (author) and Diaz (illustrator) launch right into fantasy tropes with a game of Skullball, which seems to be a dark parody of Quidditch. Our hero is Seifer Tombchewer, a dark-haired boy with wings. Actually, everyone in his kingdom seems to have wings.

At first the name "Tombchewer" sounds like a hokey attempt at a fantasy moniker, but then we learn that Seifer's grandpa "hasn't been quite right ever since he ate something poisonous that fell asleep in his porridge." The man literally gnaws on gravestones. He also regularly hunts his cat, knife and fork in hand, hoping to eat it, too. (There's another great cat joke later in the book.)

Seifer lives up in the mountains, at least until he's kidnapped and ordered to impersonate a missing prince. Seifer gets it all wrong, but he gets it right in unexpected ways. He makes a couple of friends and a couple of enemies. He survives various attempts on his life and muddles around trying to help his kingdom.

As you can tell by the bit about Seifer's grandpa, Wooding has a great time with all of this, throwing in satirical touches and funny dialogue even as he tells a somewhat classic dark fantasy tale. For example, when Seifer comes to after being kidnapped and knocked out, he cries out to Queen Euthanasia Pandemonium:

My queen. What would you have of me? How... How did I get here? [new bubble] And why does my body ache as if I've been expertly and viciously coshed by midgets?

Which, of course, he has. Wooding gives us a nice array of characters, from the cynical Prime Minister (Master Lumbago) to the little trio of red-cloaked, masochistic thuglets known as the Velvet Spies. We also come across a number of suitably horrid villains, as well a couple of princess sisters and a clever, dynamic kinda-girlfriend for Seifer, now known as Prince Talon.

Seifer-Talon apparently has a fiancée, too, though she doesn't show up for the time being. It's said of the beautiful Lady Asphyxia's mother, Baroness Crustacea Effluvia, "that one of her marathon nagging sessions drove her last husband to snort a bag of scorpions."

I hope you're getting the picture—Wooding spices his story with a lot of excellent tongue-in-cheek humor. Just one more example. When Seifer asks what happens if he doesn't agree to pretend to be the prince, the next page shows him dangling over a pit of fanged monsters, saying, "Alright! Alright! You could have just told me about the psycho carnage beasts." This is funny enough in and of itself, but then a few pages later, we glimpse the psycho carnage beasts filing their long, sharp nails as one says, "You didn't think it was a little too much? The whole 'RAAARGH' thing?" The other replies, "Oh, no. I think you got it just right." Thing #1 says, "Are you sure? Because I really wasn't feeling it tonight."

Heh heh.

Meanwhile, people are trying to kill Seifer-Talon, and he's trying to figure out how not to be killed, along with who exactly to trust. One issue is that the missing prince is a real jerk, while Seifer's a pretty nice guy. A drawback—but also a surprising source of strength. I like that Seifer knows enough to be scared when he gets tossed into an arena with a powerful opponent: "Oh, crud. I'm gonna die," he says. Nice real guy there!

Cassandra Diaz's artwork is dynamic, with a definite anime influence. Keep in mind that Seifer's kingdom is always in darkness, so backdrops vary from gray to black, with touches of blue and especially red or orange to add contrast. The whole effect is very striking.

If you're a fan of graphic novels, dark fantasy, and adventures, track down Pandemonium. It'll be worth it for the humor alone.

Note for Worried Parents: There's some violence here, though it's a bit cartoonish. Pandemonium does have a tween, if not teen, feel. For one thing, Seifer has to be at least 15 or 16. Amazon says the book is for 8 and up, but I would say 10 and up unless your 8-year-old is into anime, kill-the-orc-type video games, and/or dark fantasy.

Also: You can visit the author's website here.

A Review of Moribito: Guardian of the Spirit by Nahoko Uehashi, translated by Cathy Hirano

The problem is that when a water spirit has to be reborn every hundred years to avoid a major drought, and politics have reshaped the legend to make the water spirit out to be an enemy of the state, it’s awfully hard on the human carrier of the water spirit’s egg. Warrior Balsa is crossing over the Aoyumi River by way of the commoner’s bridge when she sees a carriage on the royal bridge. The carriage crashes, throwing the young Second Prince into the rushing water. Balsa acts swiftly and saves the boy. For her troubles, she is secretly appointed his bodyguard. It seems Chagum is possessed by a water spirit, and his own father is quietly trying to have him killed for the good of the kingdom.

The true hero of Nahoko Uehashi's Moribito is Balsa, a hardened thirty-something female warrior who will let nothing stop her from performing her duty. But as the secondary characters spring to life, we find that each of them is also compelling and dimensional. The emperor’s men aren’t faceless bad guys: for example, we meet the Star Readers, priests who read the night sky for their ruler. One young priest, Shuga, must begin to question the official version of the water spirit legend before it’s too late.

Meanwhile, Mon leads the Hunters, the emperor’s elite group of spies and assassins. An earnest sort, Mon is determined to fulfill his duty by killing the Second Prince. He's got a little Sam Spade thing going as he tries to track down the elusive Balsa, who turns out to be a better warrior than a mere woman should be.

Balsa’s own allies include a couple of beggar children, a healer named Tanda, and Torogai, a wily old woman who weaves magic. Each character, including Chagum, seems realistically conflicted without being scripted. Chagum is properly horrified by the magical egg he carries. He also begins to grow tougher under Balsa’s tutelage, even as he feels loved by the little band of travelers. Together they journey to find the fulfillment of the water spirit’s legend, along with escape from danger.

As if the death threats from Chagum’s own father aren’t enough, Balsa and the Second Prince are pursued by the Rarunga, a demon beast whose favorite food is water spirit’s egg (and who is one of the reasons the legend got mixed up in the first place). Ueshashi’s descriptions of the monster really pop—imagine giant claws emerging from beneath the ground to grab you, with the rest of the creature initially remaining unseen.

Moribito: Guardian of the Spirit is the first of the author’s series of ten best-selling books in Japan, where it is also a TV series (that apparently shows on Adult Swim in the U.S.). This translation by Cathy Hirano just won the 2009 Batchelder Award, the American Library Association’s award for best translated children’s book originally from another country.

Moribito will obviously appeal to the anime crowd, but we should really get this book into the hands of any fantasy or adventure fan. Moribito: Guardian of the Spirit is one of the best fantasy adventures I’ve read in the past few years. Pick it up for boys who like warriors and monsters or for girls who like kick-butt heroines. They'll join Balsa and Chagum on their quest to save the water spirit and will live in a new world for days.