
My family and I went fishing this morning with some new friends. It was a beautiful, breezeless day, the fish were plentiful and the company was wonderful. However, ours is not the outdoorsiest of families and when we got home at about mid-afternoon, my wife fell into a 3 hour coma and I was left to entertain 2 kids, who were now rejuvenated after sleeping on the return boat ride.
Picking up Bone and reading a blurb on the back from the Comics Journal that the book was "the rarest of cliches: fun for the whole family" I was hopeful that I'd least be able to kill 10 minutes or so reading aloud. 10 minutes turned into about 2 hours and the Comics Journal got it right.
Especially surprising was my son's enthrallment. My daughter is much more sedate than he, for her to spend two hours listening to a book isn't unprecedented. My son on the other hand, despite enjoying books, is much more... energetic, shall we say?
I enjoyed it as well. The story was interesting and fast-paced and you could tell Smith had fun creating his quirky assortment of characters (in that regard, I was reminded of the cartoon reality show, "Drawn Together"). I thought the scenes were a little vacant and rushed, but the kids didn't seem to mind at all. Even after the lack of conclusion, they didn't care, as long as I promised to get the next one. What a great introduction to graphic novels.
7 comments:
Hello! I'm new to your blog and enjoying it very much. Let me just say how excited I was to find that you are reading "Bone". It is one of my favorite graphic novels, and in my opinion a great piece of fiction. I read the complete collection at once, and I am curious to know what it is like in smaller chunks. I think you will find it even more enjoyable as you progress and you might even be surprised by it's maturity (at times). Happy reading!
I want to read this series but the waiting list at the library for it is CRAZY! I am going to probably just buy it. I did read Rose, though, which is a prequel of sorts. That was pretty good.
It's a terrific series, and gets incredibly intricate without ever losing its sense of fun.
As you know from the GN Challenge. I absolutely LOVED Bone. I read them in the color versions. I loved the drawings and the humor and the story.
You read to your kids for 2 hours? Are you in the running for some kind of parent of the year award?
For the record,I think your first sentence is perfect as is.
(and there must be a better way to phrase that)
Oh, John. I haven't laughed that much all day!
What a great reading experience for your family (wife included). Alas, my kids, who love graphic novels, think the pictures of Bone look "weird" and refuse to read it.
Lindsey: While I'm sure I could easily check this out myself, but how many are there in the complete set and how many pages does it total?
And welcome to my blog, btw.
Kailana: Graphic novels, I've read somewhere, are the most likely to not ever be returned to the library- so that waiting list might be longer than you think.
Corey: It's good to know it keeps up the momentum.
Beth: I didn't know there was a coloured version. I'll have to look for it when we read the 2nd.
Barbara: You're forgetting that I love to read, so it was actually quite selfish. Now if I can blog and drink beer with them, it'll be a grand ol' family time.
Ali: I'll grant that it doesn't look like the typical comic, but my kids didn't have a reference to compare it with. Had they been comic fans already, as yours are, maybe they wouldn't have been as open to it either.
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