Monday, January 28, 2013

Explorer: The Mystery Boxes

Explorer: The Mystery Boxes
Edited by Kazu Kibuishi
128 pages
Elementary+

This is a collection of short stories, told in the graphic novel format.  The underlying theme: what's in the box?  Each story has a different box with something different inside.  we see everything from wax dolls and magic boxes, to aliens and visits from the dead!  Endless variety awaits any who dare to open the box!

Kind of like non-fiction, it's hard to write a good desciption for a set of short stories!  The editor of this set is Kazu Kibuishi, the same creator of the Amulet graphic novels which I loved!  We do get a story by him, but there is also a lot of other variety.  I liked all the stories, which is kind of rare to like everything in the collection, but I did like some more than others. 

I did like this for the exposure to different styles of graphic novels.  Some of the styles were similar to others graphic novels I had read, but there were new ones too.  I will probably look up a couple of these other authors, such as Jason Caffoe and Stuart Livingston.  I really liked the one called "Whatzit," and think kids will like that one a lot!

Overall, this would be a great way to introduce new readers to the genre.  This is as super simple as some graphic novels, but later elementary aged kids would be fine.  Since the stories are shorter, would be useful to have discussions about each one as a group, since reading time would be short.

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