The Fog Mound Book 1: Travels of Thelonius - Susan Schade & Jon Buller
I found this book in the kids' section of the library and was struck by its cover, which has a sort of Chris Ware look to it (though it wasn't in fact designed by him). Flipping through it, I discovered that it was a combination of prose (with some illustrations) and a graphic novel, and that intrigued me enough to check it out. It's apparently the first part of a planned trilogy, and I'd love to see more, both for its unique format and to see where the story goes.
Thelonius is a talking chipmunk in a post-human world where some animals have learned to talk and the rest speak a universal "low language." He loves the old legends about "when human beings ruled the earth" but most animals in the Untamed Forest don't really believe the tales. But Thelonius ends up in the City of Ruins which is now populated with all sorts of talking animals, including Fitzgerald the porcupine and the mysterious Flying Bear. He also encounters the feared Dragon Lady and her army of ratminks.
I'm guessing the future books will explore a little more about what happened to the humans and how the animals became more human. It's a wonderful talking-animal story, and the alternating graphic-novel/text chapters are a good mix. It's just the thing to hook a kid on comics, but may also be a gateway from comics to novels as well. (Also, it'll make you jealous of husband-and-wife teams who get to make fun stuff like this book.)
Fed to jonathan's brain | June 30, 2007
| Comments (0)
