Dinosaurs and Fairies

Got a couple more good graphic novels in today:

Cameron and His Dinosaurs by Scott Christian Sava is really cool. Basically, an evil genius creates intelligent dinosaurs, but they don't want to work for him. (I giggled at the T-Rex telling the mad scientist to "seek professional help".) Instead, they make friends with a boy named Cameron. Meanwhile, the scientist still has to produce some dinosaurs for his more evil backers (bear in mind, some of this is firmly tongue in cheek). There's a lovely dino-vs-robot-dino battle, and all's well that ends well. Man, I hope there are sequels, though. This was great--no blood, just mashed metal, and the closest thing to sex was hand-holding (by adults). (IDW did a great job with the binding, too.)

Korgi, Book 1, by Christian Slade, is good in different ways. It's a sweet story about a "mollie" girl named Ivy and her korgie (a kind of dog/fox), Sprout. Aside from the introduction and a bit at the end describing some of the characters, the black-and-white story is wordless. Some of the monsters are scary, but Ivy and Sprout always come out right. I ordered this one after I read Book 2, actually, and wanted to add to the collection. BTW, mollies look like little people, but have wings. (More good binding, this time by Top Shelf.)

Pokemon Do Live!

Yes! Viz Comics is reissuing the Pokemon Adventures stories from at least a decade ago. We used to have several on the shelf, but they disintergrated. Believe me, I tried using as much book tape as I could on the covers to hold them together--they were that popular. With a little pre-emptive cover taping on these new digests, I should have books that last a while (Viz interior binding seems to hold up well, but any paperback graphic novel will loose its cover if not cared for after about ten circulations).

In all the time I've been working at a library, there are still kids who come up looking for Pokemon books. I would have thought the fad would have passed, but I can still find the cartoon on TV once in a while, and the video game is still going strong from Nintendo. I know kids in grade school who still pass around the trading cards. I'm glad I can re-fill the need for these books. The heavy demand was why the originals were kept in circulation as long as I could.

In other news, I found a cute little gem published by First Second called Tiny Tyrant. It looks quite well-bound.