Friday, June 12, 2015

Mr. Pants: Slacks, Camera, Action! by Scot McCormick, illustrated by R. H. Lazzell

[Update: This turned out to be THE most popular book I took on my school booktalks. I'm now purchasing the rest of the series post-haste.]

I rarely review sequels, but I really wanted to preview this before purchasing it for the library and the only other library in my consortium which owned the first book promptly lost it. So, when I had an opportunity to review the second book I decided to just go with it.

Mr. Pants, an orange and white cat with two differently-sized eyes lives with his sister, gray cat Foot-Foot and their youngest sibling, little white cat Grommy. The three of them live with their human Mom and act rather like real children. Mr. Pants wants to make a movie and win a contest, but first there are chores to be done and then things keep going wrong! Will he ever get his movie made? Will they find out the end of of their bedtime story about Bum-Bum and his adventure riding the Vuumba? Who will win the game of "Honestly" by making Mom say "Honestly kids!" first?

The art felt very flat and digital, which worked really well with the odd storyline and wacky characters. It took me a little while to get used to the tilted perspectives and panels which sometimes felt cluttered to me, but I think kids would adapt to this a lot more easily than I did. This wasn't my personal favorite, but I did find parts of it quite funny.

Verdict: The flat, cartoon art coupled with the nonsensical storyline made me think of a lot of contemporary cartoon shows for middle grade kids and I think fans of Adventure Time and similar shows would definitely go for this. It's also got somewhat of a Garfield vibe to it as well. I'd definitely recommend adding this to your graphic novel collection.

ISBN: 9780803740099; Published 2015 by Dial/Penguin; Review copy provided by publisher; Donated to the library

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