Training Day: El Toro and Friends (Family Comic Friday)

Spinning off from the very popular series ¡vamos! (Let's Go!) comes this bilingual graphic novel from Raul the Third!

El Toro is a very popular luchador (that's a masked wrestler who combats in lucha libre style wrestling. He's about to take on the world champ. But El Toro is just too lazy to train. Thankfully, he's got encouragement in the form of his trainer, Kooky Dooky.

I recently read and reviewed the all-ages graphic novel Lowriders to the Rescue. It was the amazing artwork by Raul the Third that I was a huge fan of. I am in awe of Mexican artwork. Especially sugar skulls. While Raul the Third doesn't seem to have added any of those signature dia del los muertos decorations in this book, it's that art style I became enamored with in my previous experience with Raul the Third which flourishes throughout every page..

Adding to the wonderment of the art is the brilliant color palette used. Mega kudos to Elaine Bay for making every page explode with color.

Training Day is a little bit silly. But it's also a little bit of a travel guide about Mexican culture. Plus it's a language lesson book as well. I love that Raul the Third first has the characters say phrases first in English and then follow up in Spanish. I've read a few bilingual comics that assume that the reader knows both Spanish and English. Here, the author allows readers to see how the two sentences might be saying the same thing. But  he also shows how the voice and sentence structure can change in translation.

Training Day was published in 2021. There's currently 4 books in the World of ¡vamos! series. I think with the most current release of Tacos Today in March, 2023, that's why my local library had this and the other 4 books in the series on the new shelf. 

Amazon recommends this book for readers ages 6-8. I think that's a perfect age group for this book. If you know of a child that speaks English as their primary language and they're about to start learning Spanish in grades 1-3, get them this book! If you have a young readers in which English is a second language, get them to this book. Forget the age suggestions. Books like this one can be a valuable tool helping integrate Spanish speaking students who are learning English into the multilingual integrated classroom. 

I hope that Raul the Third continues to produce important learning tools such as this one. I also hope parents, guardians and teachers will use these books to teach both English and Spanish. 

Worth Consuming!

Rating: 10 out of 10 stars.

The Nightmare Brigade, Vol. 2: Into the Woods (Family Comic Friday)

Rarely after I read something do I go online to buy the sequel at full price. I mean, I've gone online to buy follow-up pieces before. But I'm a bargain hunter and I am willing to wait for a deal. Not this time!

Last month I read and reviewed the first volume of the French comic The Nightmare Brigade. As I was rushing to get the book returned to my local library, I didn't treat it as a Family Comic Friday offering. I saw it on the new shelf in the kids graphic novel section at the library. From reading the back cover I knew that this was going to be a different kind of read. But I didn't expect to be blown away by the amazing storytelling of the first volume!

When I got to the last page, I was incensed! The first volume, which collected English translations of the first two issues, closed on a cliff hanger! I couldn't believe it! The revelation made on that very last page is what made me research when the second book was coming out. Thankfully, I learned on the Papercutz website that my wait would only be a month. And as I said, I immediately ordered me a copy of book 2!

When we left the residents of the sleep clinic, amnesiac Esteban learned the truth about his missing past. To begin this volume, Esteban awakens to find he's home??? The man and woman who own the house claim to be his parents and that Esteban's time at Doctor Albert Angus' facility was a delusion. If that's all true, where are the rest of the Nightmare Brigade?

Heading to the clinic, Esteban finds it overrun by the performers of a strange circus. The clinic staff have been held hostage. Friends Tristan and Sarah are missing and Dr. Angus has been drugged and placed inside the sleep chamber. Even worse, the evil patient Leonard appears to be freed from his cell and running the whole operation!

As with volume 1, this book reprints 2 issues of the French series. With how trippy and twisty the first segment was, I was seriously wondering if my love for this series was premature. I had imagined this was what the movie Inception was like, if I had seen the film. But by the time I finished the second story, I realized that my wavering faith in The Nightmare Brigade was premature. 

I can personally attest that all of the mysteries that were put forth in the first volume are answered in this edition. I wondered if such a move by author Franck Thilliez might have been a mistake. Yet by the end of the book, there's about a half dozen more riddles that need solving. They've got me hooked again! But this time, I don't have a clue when they're gonna release book 3!

The horror!

Neither Amazon nor publisher Papercutz has a recommended age group for this book. Therefore, I'm going to have the recommendation myself. I would say based on the scary characters, the intense physiological mystery and the occasional mild swear, readers who are in grades 4th-7th should have no trouble enjoying this book. Though I wouldn't be surprised if young adult readers as well as parents and guardians become as obsessed as I am with the Nightmare Brigade. 

Worth Consuming!

Rating: 9 out of 10 stars.

Robin Hood (Family Comic Friday)

   This graphic novel retelling of the legend of Robin Hood is unlike any I've ever encountered. These stories are similar to those retold in numerous films and TV shows I seen over the years. But since this book is retold and researched by historians, professors, and librarians I am inclined to believe that these adventures are the true stories behind the legend of the famous British outlaw. 

   In this graphic novel, learn why Robin Hood had to flee to Sherwood Forest and came to form his band of Merry Men. Then marvel as he outwits wealthy noblemen, corrupt clergy, and the dastardly Sheriff of Nottingham. Along with the tried and true stories of how Robin came to befriend Little John and become entranced by the beautiful Maid Marian, there are adventures in this book that I had never heard of before such as how Robin Hood tricked a bishop into marrying a duchess to a commoner and Robin's feast with the Sheriff as guest of honor! 

   Plus, there's a certain episode involving an archery tournament with more twists than ever before! Oddly enough, while I felt like I was getting the real story of England's most famous outlaw, Robin's main protagonist, Prince John is nowhere to be found in this book. Was he just overlooked? Or maybe he really didn't play a role in any of the original legends of Robin Hood!

   This book was written by the husband and wife team of Aaron Shepard and Anne L. Watson. These folklorists made Robin Hood seem a lot more animated than Disney's take and it was far superior to that dud starring Kevin Costner! The art's pretty good too.

      This book is just one of several graphic novels published by Stone Arch Books based on famous legends and classic novels. If they are anything like this volume, I would be happy to add them to my collection. Each book comes with additions in the back of the book such as study questions, history lesson about life in medieval England during the times of when Robin Hood may have lived in real life, as well as writing exercises and a glossary of terms.

    Teachers and homeschooling parents, I highly recommend this book as a way to get kids reading and learning about history. Kids these days are turning away from books in droves and you've got to start making reading fun again somewhere. 

   A great educational read that was thrilling and tons of fun.

   Worth Consuming

   Rating: 9 out of 10 stars.

The Sherlock Holmes Puzzle Collection

  When I found this book, I was so excited. I have been on a Sherlock kick recently having discovered the Benedict Cumberbatch series on PBS. So when I found this puzzle book, I thought I would get to be like the famous detective and solve some crimes.

  The book is setup just like the original novels by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle with Dr. John Watson as the narrator. This time, the prose is in the form of Watson's notebook containing some of Holmes lesser known ( and so extent, less exciting mysteries- unpublished of course!) With the answers in the back, I thought that this would be like Donald J Sobol's Encyclopedia Brown series that I adored as a kid. (who am I kidding, I still do!) Yet I would have to venture that about 75% of this book reads like the SATs!

   With complicated word plays, lengthy math problems, logic puzzles, and blasted fractions, this book was hard. It didn't help that these puzzles get more and more difficult as the book progresses. Plus, some of the more tricky puzzles unfairly require the reader to have a general knowledge of life in Victorian England in order to solve them.

  By the end of the book, these contests were so difficult to even comprehend that I was pretty much rushing through them. I was that flustered with this book. I think you've got to be a member of MENSA to enjoy the second half of this book. And if you aren't, you’re going to need a pen, paper and possibly a calculator and dictionary to solve them.

  I enjoyed the artwork, some of which were original pieces by Sydney Paget, illustrator of Doyle's stories when first published in London's The Strand magazine. This is a lovely little book for serious Sherlock enthusiasts but for a comparative novice of Holmes and Watson like me, it's going straight to a used bookstore for trade credit.

Rating: 5 out of 10 stars.