Much as Bacigalupi’s Ship Breaker (2010) was a clarion call to action against climate change, here’s a signal alert to young teens to think about what they eat, while the considerable appeal of the characters and plot defies any preachiness. It’s up to Rabi and his pals to try to prove what’s going on-and to survive the corporation’s efforts to silence them. The zombie cows and zombie humans who emerge from the muck are apparently a product of the food supply gone cuckoo in service of big-money profits with little concern for the end result. The ponds of cow poo and crammed quarters for the animals are described in gaggingly smelly detail, and the bone-breaking, bloody, flesh-smashing encounters with the zombies have a high gross-out factor. The narrator hero, Rabi (for Rabindranath), and his youth baseball teammates and friends, Miguel and Joe, discover by chance that all is not well with their small town’s principal industry: the Milrow corporation’s giant feedlot and meat-production and -packing facility. The wholesome-seeming Iowa cornfields are a perfect setting for the emergence of ghastly anomalies: flesh-eating cows and baseball-coach zombies. Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle meets Left for Dead/ The Walking Dead/ Shaun of the Dead in a high-energy, high-humor look at the zombie apocalypse, complete with baseball (rather than cricket) bats. Humble, endearing and utterly easy to relate to don’t miss this one. He includes an author’s note that shouldn’t be overlooked-just be sure to keep the tissues handy. Eagle-eyed readers will also be able to see the beginnings of his well-loved books about Amelia. While readers will certainly pick up on the nostalgia, it should be refreshing-if not completely alien-for younger readers to see teens interacting without texting, instead using phones with cords. Gownley’s story is wonderful his small-town life is so vividly evinced, it’s difficult to not get lost in it. A long-standing love of comics leads him to write his own, though his first attempt is shot down by his best friend, who suggests he should instead write a comic about their group. After he falls ill, first with chicken pox and then pneumonia, he falls behind in school and loses his head-of-the-class standing-a condition he is determined to reverse. Gownley seems to be a smart kid and a talented athlete, and he has a loyal group of friends and a girlfriend. He’s not the archetypal nerd, and he doesn’t retreat to draw due to feelings of loneliness or isolation. The charismatic creator of the Eisner-nominated Amelia Rules! series recounts his beginnings as a cartoonist.įrom the very first panel, Gownley’s graphic memoir is refreshingly different. (further reading, source list, index) (Nonfiction. An editor’s magic would have benefited this average effort. The cover promises “21 Magic Tricks and Illusions,” but some of those are how to build a box kite, a recipe and an explanation of how to measure volume displacement of solids in water. Although period photographs and advertisements add interest, the narrative is, unfortunately, often repetitive, sometimes almost word for word. Page-long text boxes include biographies of the Wright brothers, Jack London and Theodore Roosevelt, and a description of the rambling Winchester Mansion. This biography includes a wealth of detailed information on both Houdini and a wide variety of only marginally related subjects. A few of his more clever illusions have never been fully explained when he died at age 52 in 1927, he took many of his secrets to the grave. He began his career working as a sideshow act in carnivals but, by virtue of talent, study and very hard work, elevated his craft to an art, making his name a household word. Harry Houdini may be the most famous magician ever.
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