I was curious to see what kinds of projects we’d find in Maker Comics: Build a Robot!, as the subject is a bit more ambitious and unusual than the other comics in the line. Many people think they could, with a little guidance, plant a garden or bake cookies or draw a comic, but few people think about building their own robot. The projects in this book, though, seem very achievable and, as a bonus, serve as an excellent introduction […]

Create a Costume! is another outstanding entry in the Maker Comics line. Kids these days want to dress up for conventions and other gatherings, and the emphasis here is very much encouraging do-it-yourself. Guided by the Costume Critter, a hamster in a hat and cape, Bea and Parker learn how to decorate, modify, and repurpose secondhand clothes into outfits that can be used for a magical girl or boy a witch or wizard a space traveller a superhero (including a […]

Howard Cruse’s Stuck Rubber Baby, I have no doubt, has changed lives. It changed mine. It’s the semi-autobiographical story of Toland Polk, a young man hiding from his homosexuality in the southern US in the 1960s, as the civil rights movement becomes more important. Toland is raised by well-meaning racists, but he hangs out with people more on the fringes, dating a politicized folk singer and going to parties with a gay former sailor and a drag queen and people […]

Two Tillie Walden books have been holding down the edge of my to-do stack table for years now. And they work well in that function, as Spinning (2017) is just under 400 pages, and On a Sunbeam (2018) is over 540! These are bricks of books, is what I’m saying. Walden does gorgeous art, spare and thought-provoking and expressive, in a variety of genres. Spinning is an autobiography, the story of her time as a teenage figure skating competitor and […]

History Comics: The Great Chicago Fire: Rising From the Ashes was one of the first releases from this new comics line from publisher First Second, who has had great success with their Science Comics. As written by Kate Hannigan and illustrated by Alex Graudins, this is the story of two siblings (and a puppy, for additional cuteness) who get caught up in the 1871 fire that devastated Chicago and left a third of the city homeless. Trying to do a […]

Science Comics: Rocks and Minerals Geology from Caverns to the Cosmos by Andy Hirsch I’ve really enjoyed Hirsch’s previous entries in this series, Trees and Dogs (my favorite of the series), so I was disappointed that this wasn’t nearly as entertaining for me. I wasn’t expecting the book to start with so much information about the Big Bang and meteorites and the makeup of the earth and volcanoes. It’s necessary for the topic, I suppose, but that’s not the book […]

I’ve been looking forward to this installment of Maker Comics — I’m really curious about learning how to Survive in the Outdoors. As told by Mike Lawrence, Sophia and her younger brother Alonso are spending the weekend with Grandpa, who’s going to take them fishing. They just want to stay on their phones and video games, but he manages to involve them in preparing for their trip. There’s an air of danger to all this. Typical of the series, the […]

Go With the Flow marks just how prevalent female readers and authors have become in comics. As one of the characters says, “Fifty percent of the population gets a period… but it’s like this HUGE secret we can’t talk about?” This book would not have existed several years ago. As it is, it’s a good starting point. It’s a lengthy book, over 300 pages, because the authors touch, if only briefly, on a wide variety of related subjects. (I believe […]