shidoburrito's reviews
1533 reviews

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.

Wow! I heard good things but this book was great! I love me suspenseful, science fiction, mysteries! A great gateway book or teen read-a-like for Michael Crichton. It's not space SciFi, but biological. It starts out with a mysterious virus that is rapidly aging the infected in a posh college. Soon all staff are dead and people in hazmat suits are not letting the students leave! Then the book just gets better as a group tries to find out what's going on and it turns out to be something so much more. A great book!

Hooray! The third book did not disappoint! I was leery, because Scarlet didn't quite live up to how much I enjoyed Cinder, but I LOVED Cress! Cress and Thorne are adorable, and the action and suspense was great. We're well into the war against the Lunars now! Can't wait for the next book!

It took me until the very end of this comic to understand the title. It took my husband two seconds. World history was never my strong suit. In fact, I really dislike history and historical fiction. Congratulations Gene Yang!! You have educated me about the Boxer rebellion in a wonderfully told graphic novel!

I can't do it! I just can't. This book has no redeeming qualities at all. I picked it out because my husband brought me into the world of D&D 4 years ago, I thought this book seemed like a fun idea. I read the inside flap and I SWEAR the summary made it sound like this was a story of a teen boy who is forced to go to camp to get away from his anti-social behavior and obsession with C&C (the made-up RPG for this book). There at camp he meets others that play C&C and he learns how to make friends and stick up for himself. Cool! NO. Instead the main character, Perry, is written in such a way that I couldn't stand him. He's so cliche and awkward and terribly written I couldn't care an ounce for the kid. I can understand giving faults to a character and having them rise above it, or learn, but Perry with his bowl cut hairdo, not a friend in the world, unable to talk to girls, bullying brother, incredibly un-supportive parents, never got less annoying. Plus, what the hell is up with his obsession (and the author's obsession writing about) his single, newly-spouted pubic hair??? For the love of God, no one is so stupid as to expose themselves to a girl to show off a single pubic hair to prove he's a man. Not without mental issues, which Perry (among his thousands of pathetic traits) was not introduced to having.

Perry does make it to another world, The world of Other Normals, but it's shoddily described and put together. The characters are slightly nicer to him, but it's only because everyone on Earth seems to hate Perry's guts.

Speaking of terrible cliches, no one in this book acted like a human being. I mean, seriously, EVERYONE in Perry's life is cruel to him? EVERYONE? All the students and campers beat up on him and bully him? Both his parents are shallow and pick on their son for not being "manly" enough and also bring their lawyer significant others into ganging up on their child?

Did the author, Ned Vizzini ever even LOOK at a rule book for a tabletop RPG? It seems he mentions the only elements he thinks he knows about ("Oh, my speed must be about 7, and my HONOR is 50") and rapes the character building process as well as world building. Jesus, take about an hour of your life to learn about an RPG before making it a main plot in your book!

I'm sorry Ned, I know you're dead, and your death notice made me want to read one of your books, so I picked the one I felt I could relate to the most with RPGs. I'm sorry to say I chose poorly.

I find myself again wishing for half star ratings on Goodreads! This book would have been 3.5 but I gave it 4 because it was a good graphic novel, just not a great one for me, personally. The art in this graphic novel was great, I really love the way the artist drew her characters. But the cute, round, faces and, what looked to me to be manga-inspired (just slightly), did not prepare me for the depth of the characters or the darkness of some of their lives. It has a happy ending, but it's not a feel-good graphic novel. I really felt bad for the female protagonist, Anne, with her home life with a hoarding mother. For Anne, her room is the only place in the house she has control over and she can keep the hoarded mess out. I was deeply anguished, along with Anne, in one scene where her mother cleans up the living room for her new "boyfriend". Anne is amazed... until she steps into her room to find all of the junk from the living room was shoved into the only place left uncluttered: her bedroom. As someone who finds peace and safety in cleanliness, I felt so sad for Anne.

Anyway, this graphic novel is a slice of life comic, but of lives that are surrounded by things, objects, and knicnknacks. What makes a home, a home? Is it the people who live there, or the objects they choose to treasure that fill their house?

Totes adorbs. Hope it wins the Caldecott!

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*