Monday, October 29, 2012

Quick: "Secret of the Stone Frog" by David Nytra.

Quick: Secret of the Stone Frog by David Nytra, 2012, 9781935179184.

A kids comic book novel from the TOON BOOKs people who publish kid comic book novels.

A brother and sister fall asleep and wake up in a forest.  Boy and Girl (I'm guessing 5 and 8 years old respectively) have adventures.  Find large mason frog that tells them "the path [home] is right behind me!".

Boy and Girl meet bee keeper whose bees eat their words from the comic's speech bubbles. Boy and Girl escape mean lady and her attack bees.Boy and Girl meet anthropomorphic lions dressed in frippery with walking sticks.  Fripperists give them huge bunnies to ride to another stone frog.

Second stone frog directs them into a cavern.  Cavern is massive subway lobby.  Subway fills with anthropomorphic, walking, non-talking suited fish.  Boy and Girl board train but flee when evil Bee Lady comes aboard.

Boy and Girl go above ground into strange city.  Are almost run over by horse carriage.  Listen to quack selling health elixer.  Witness a pickpocket.  Pickpocket walks with them and threatens them.  Boy shoves pickpocket who falls over in from of police precinct house.  House comes to life yelling at them.

Boy and Girl flee.  Horse carriage almost runs them over again.  Horse turns into dinosaur.  Dinosaur chases them, buildings come to quivering and waving life, paving stones of street turn into crocodiles (or are they alligators?), Boy and Girl find last frog and see their bedroom shutters.  Boy and Girl jump into bedroom and close shutters.  Boy and Girl go back to sleep.

Comments:
1.  Very fantastical.  Dependent on images and imagination to enjoy it.
2.  I have little imagination for this type of tale and rate this an "eh" on a scale of "crap" to "author is a genius".
3.  I liked the artwork.  All black and white.  Boy and Girl are simply drawn with a lot of white space.  Their surroundings are quite detailed.  Once Boy and Girl return to their room their clothes are shaded.
4.  Author lives in 100 Mile House, British Columbia.  100 Mile House looks to be in the middle of a very pretty nowhere.
5.  I can hear the local Ne'er Do Well out at the front desk.  What a jackape.

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