Customer Reviews

Batman's Dark Secret (Hello Reader! Level 3)

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
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2 star:		(1)
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Kelley Pucket does an excellent job of re-telling Batman's origin for young readers, from the perspective of a young Bruce Wayne. While Jon J. Muth's watercolor illustrations are nothing less than phenominal. Each character is truly brought to life through the paintings.

A must for ANY Batman fan, young and old alike.

We are home schooling a 7 year old who had a tough time getting started on reading last year. He's progressing very well now, though, so I've been looking for books that are a bit more advanced, closer to third grade level than what he's been reading. He also has a typical interest in super heroes, and this book turned out to be an excellent way to help him develop his reading skills in a fun way.

The artwork in the book is outstanding, and the storytelling doesn't pull any punches on the Batman origin story. It's not overly explicit about Bruce Wayne's parents getting shot, but it does have his parents going into an alley with him, getting shot "off camera", so to speak, and Bruce being left alone, and terrified of the dark as a result. The balance of the book is about him overcoming his fear of the dark with the help of the bat cave.

If you have a very sensitive child, the plot might be a bit traumatic, but I think most boys of the age this story is aimed at will have no difficulty enjoying it. If you're looking for a less dark story with a similar level of kid appeal, consider "Superman's First Flight" (ISBN 0439095506).

This story illudes to the double homicide of Bruce Wayne's parents, then talks about him being afraid of the dark, then he quickly decides he will fight evil--The End! Not really a great book to read to children, and not interesting enough to read more than once!

Today's Language Arts anthology story was "Stone Soup" by Jon J. Muth. As a tangent, I showed my students "Batman's Dark Secret", and the kids were wowed that a comic book artist does children's lit. "Batman's Dark Secret" IS a children's book, but it's also a healthy retelling of the kid years of Bruce Wayne. You need to buy this if you are a comic book fan; if you remember Muth's Dracula graphic novel, you REALLY need to add this to your library.