This week’s stack is a grab bag: I don’t have any connecting themes, but I do have several smaller books I’ve read recently in between (or during) some of my longer reads: mostly comics, but also a picture book and a puzzle book.
Drawn Onward written by Daniel Nayeri, illustrated by Matt Rockefeller
It’s rare that I write about picture books these days—I still enjoy them but my youngest kid is now in middle school so we’re usually reading longer books; it’s been a long time since I’ve read a picture book to her (though we do still occasionally have some story time from novels). This one stood out to me, though, both because of the art and because the entire book is a palindrome poem (hinted at by the title itself). The book progresses line by line, and then when it reaches the center of the book, the lines are repeated in reverse order, giving them a different meaning. The actual text is quite brief, with pages and pages of silent illustrations, showing a young boy traveling through a fantastical world.
The premise of the book isn’t my favorite and warrants a content warning: the boy and his father are grieving the loss of the mother—his adventures are sparked by a need to find an answer because it doesn’t feel like he and his father are going to be okay. He does find the solace he is seeking, and the second half of the book mirrors the locations of the first half, but with a more positive, optimistic outlook, though it’s hard for me to know if the book would be comforting to a child who had actually lost a parent, or if it would seem too easy or simple—the sparseness of the text does not go into a lot of depth there. Still, I was fascinated with the overall structure of the book and the illustrations are outstanding—it’s just one that you may want to preview depending on your own kids’ temperaments.
(Be Smart About) Screen Time! by Rachel Brian
This short book is somewhere in between a picture book and a comic book, and it’s intended for kids who are just getting their own mobile devices (or at least more access to one). Of course, a lot of kids are likely to be using screens of some sort quite a bit before they can read this book on their own, but this book is aimed at that age where they may be able to start setting some of their own limits and have more control of a device. It covers a broad range of topics in short, bite-sized chunks: responsibility for your device, some dangerous or harmful things that are online (such as misinformation), and a lot about social media. It has explanations for why our brains love social media and how to be careful when using it, and also has some sections on trolls and bullying (and taking responsibility for your own behavior online).
My own pre-teen has a device that she’s able to use at home and we allow her a good amount of freedom with it, though she currently doesn’t have any social media accounts and mostly uses it to listen to music or watch Minecraft videos. We both read the book and talked about it a little, and for the most part it lined up with things we’d already talked about before or that she already knew, so that felt like a good confirmation. I think it’s a nice overview of topics that are worth thinking about and discussing with your kid before they get broader access to the internet, and the comics format makes it easy to digest.
Phineas and Ferb: Classic Comics Collection #1
This comic book includes nearly 90 pages of short stories and gags set in the world of Phineas and Ferb, a delightful cartoon about two very geeky brothers who are always building absurdly complex gadgets, and their older sister Candace who is always trying to bust them. In case you haven’t ever seen the show, it’s currently on Disney+ and is delightful. Each episode does tend to follow a formula: the two boys build something outlandish and Candace tries to get her mom to notice; their pet platypus Perry sneaks off to live his double life as Agent P, defeating the hapless Doctor Doofenschmirtz and his latest something-inator; the two plotlines somehow merge to ensure that all evidence of the boys’ adventure is erased just before the mom sees it, and the day is saved. But just as the restrictions in a haiku or sonnet can allow for countless possibilities, the show shoves an incredible amount of variation into that basic plot outline.
The comic stories tend to be a bit shorter than the typical TV episodes—some of them focus on a specific piece, like an encounter between Perry and Doofenschmirtz, or being almost entirely about Phineas and Ferb’s latest invention. There are several one-page stories: Doofenschmirtz telling tales about his past, short gags about Candace’s inability to bust the boys, side stories about some of the other characters in the show.
Overall, the comics were fun and have a lot of the same flavor as the show, but they’re a bit less filling because sometimes they felt like you’re only getting half of the puzzle. What really makes the show for me is the way everything falls into place by the end, but a lot of these comics stories don’t have separate threads to tie up together. Still, if you’re looking for some extra Phineas and Ferb while you wait for the new episodes (!) coming in 2025, this is one way to do it.
Puzzle Me Twice by Alex Bellos
The subtitle for this book is 70 Simple Puzzles (Almost) Everyone Gets Wrong, and it’s a mix of all sorts of types of questions. There are logic puzzles, word-based puzzles, math puzzles—but what most of them have in common is that ultimately they’re all about reasoning. Many of them are presented in a way that makes it feel like there’s an obvious answer … and in most cases the obvious answer is wrong.
There are some classic puzzles that I’d already seen before but that may be new to kids: for instance, the choice between $10,000 a day for 30 days and starting with 1 cent and doubling each day for 30 days is a pretty basic example of the power of exponential growth. There are also puzzles about the birthday problem (how likely it is for you to share a birthday with somebody in your group), a couple of Möbius Strip puzzles, some optical illusions and a variation on the Monty Hall problem.
For kids who like brain teasers, this is an excellent little book. It probably won’t take them long to work their way through the whole set, but I like the way that it teaches a variety of types of critical thinking and lateral thinking.
Adulthood Is a Gift! by Sarah Andersen
Sarah Andersen is the artist behind Sarah’s Scribbles, a webcomic in which she depicts herself as a bug-eyed, anxiety-ridden millennial. Now, more than a decade after the beginning of the webcomic, millennials are no longer “young adults”—the youngest of them are approaching 30 and the oldest are in their 40s—and Andersen’s stories about herself have shifted somewhat. This fifth collection includes a lot more jokes about getting old, for instance: the way different parts of our bodies may stop functioning optimally, or the expectations that come with adulthood that feel increasingly out of reach. The title is a reference to the first Sarah’s Scribbles collection, Adulthood Is a Myth!
The last third of the book includes some essays and reflections on a decade of Sarah’s Scribbles. Andersen shares some of her earlier work, talks about some cartoon-based regrets, and peels back the curtain a bit on what it has been like being a cartoonist. While she’s always included a lot of her personality (flaws and all) in her comics, these essays are a more serious window into her world and show a bit more of the real person behind the cartoon, which I appreciated.
My Current Stack
I’m currently reading Marigold Mind Laundry by Jungeun Yun, which reminds me a little of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind: instead of washing your clothes, the laundry removes emotional stains and creases, wiping away painful memories so you can be happy. I’m curious to see where this goes—I really loved Eternal Sunshine and I felt like its take on wiping memories was that it wasn’t such a great idea after all. The book has a different approach and may be advocating for leaving some memories behind, but there’s still room to go in either direction.
My pile of unread books continues to grow at an unsustainable pace, so … I need to do some more reading and more weeding!
Disclosure: I received copies of these books for review. Affiliate links to Bookshop.org help support my writing and independent booksellers.
