Customer Reviews

Children at Play: A Cul de Sac Collection

5 star:		(33)
4 star:		(19)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

If you are not familiar with this daily newspaper comic strip, then you are in for a treat. This is brilliant stuff - the drawings are superb, surpassed only by the writing. The characters are familiar, and yet fresh and happily new. Not since Calvin & Hobbes has the familiar world of childhood been so happily, and messily, turned on its head to reveal so many of its treasures and pitfalls. Stop reading this review and just buy the book already!

"Children At Play: A Cul De Sac Collection"
by Richard Thompson
(Andrews McMeel Publishing, 2009)
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I had never heard of the "Cul De Sac" newspaper strip before, but this collection has completely won me over. The strip is sort of like "Calvin And Hobbes" with an ensemble cast; there's a shared celebration of the twisted, mordant sense of humor that kids can have (and that adults often find so surprising) and a familiar imaginative twisting of reality. The main characters are young, preschool-age, not-too-naughty Alice and her older brother Petey, an agoraphobic fraidy-cat who nonetheless has a pretty good sense of humor. Their parents are likable: Mom always tries to put a positive spin on things, while Dad (much like Calvin's dad) is more laconic and low-energy -- a hard day at work makes him just a little bit too grumpy to follow all of Alice's flights of fancy.

Much of the action takes place at Alice's nursery school, where a handful of oddball kids cluster together and try and figure out the world; there's also a lot of talking at the family dinner table and Alice coming into Petey's room to try and pry him away from his ever-present comic books. The humor is hard to describe; really you just have to read it. But parents who like to laugh at their own foibles as well as those of their kids, or fans of "Calvin And Hobbes", will find a lot to laugh about here. Definitely recommended -- I wish there was another volume out that I could read as well! (Joe Sixpack, ReadThatAgain kid's lit reviews)

We Washington Post readers are lucky enough to see Cul de Sac daily and get a bonus weekly satirical cartoon from Richard Thompson, so the excellence of this collection was no surprise to me.

Richard Thompson combines a surreal view of the world with a sense of humor on the order of Far Side AND a set of believable child characters. If you can deal with Stewie on Family Guy being far more articulate than a baby should be, you can deal with the vocabulary and insights of these kids, who are much funnier and less nasty. Petey Otterloop (last name a DC joke)is an all-purpose neurotic kid, while his sister Alice is a much more typical child, albeit an articulate genius child. Their parents are funny too, not clueless - AND we get to see their heads, unlike in Peanuts.

Thompson is funny and insightful and uses perspective and line weight in amazing ways. Great text, great characters, amazing drawing, and good insight - what more do you want? Possibly the sweetness of Calvin and Hobbes, which most emphatically is not here. But Thompson isn't mean, either.

I wasn't familiar with this comic strip and bought it strictly on the wacky look of the cover. I wasn't disappointed. The jokes are funny and on the wacky side, but not too dry, nor unsuitable for children. You can definitely leave this one on the coffee table and you will find everyone picking it up.

As you get to know the characters it gets more fun as they are very consistent in their quirkiness and you can begin get a sense of the dynamic between characters. The kids are very well drawn with an off-kilter quality that very aptly describes the series in visual form. Think of it as a contemporary version of Peanuts but with a greater emotional potential due to Thompson's manic portrayal of children. Some of the expressions he gives his characters are a hoot all by themselves.

About every five pages there is a color version of the strip which is fun and gives a bit of texture to the overall look of the book.

This is my first introduction to CHILDREN AT PLAY: A CUL DE SAC COLLECTION and I must say that I'm impressed with Richard Thompson's work.

The comic strip revolves around a little girl named Alice and her older neurotic brother Peter Otterloop, and their friends. These kids make profound observations about the world around them and the things that they come up with will have you in stitches.

And as other reviewers have pointed out there is definitely a shade of Charles Schulz's "Peanuts" in the CHILDREN AT PLAY... book. Although adults do make appearances in this comic strip--like Alice & Peter's parents and teachers--they're kept to a minimum and only in supporting roles.

Each strip has wonderfully cute drawings and the characters all have individual personalities. I really like "Dill," who is Alice's friend, because he has this bulbous nose, big ears and very little hair on his head. He says the funniest things!

Anyway, I'd recommend this book to anyone who is a "Peanuts" fan.

I grew up with newspaper comics like Peanuts...then came Calvin and The Far Side, Dilbert...and I really haven't been very interested in anything new else lately. My local daily doesn't run this strip, so I had no idea if it was too vanilla, too weird, dumb...whatever. I was pleasantly surprised that the kids really grew on me. They weren't overly rude or obnoxious, but not just cute little waifs, either. Nicely faceted personalities. Definitely not disappointed.

I learned to read from the newspaper comic strips. When my father arrived home from work, I would sit on his lap while he read me "the funny papers" and then we would have family supper.
Soon I was too interested in Dick Tracy, Steve Canyon, Li'l Abner, Blondie to wait for his arrival. The paper was there, I just had to figure it out for myself. And I did.

It has been a long time since then. But I still seek out the newspaper comics. My recent favorites have been Calvin & Hobbes, and Bloom County. Both are now gone. Cul de Sac is a worthy successor. BUT IT IS NOT IN MY PAPER! I must seek it out online. That seems to be an inferior media for the noble tradition.

The cast of characters are well developed individuals. The "childish" limits of the four-year-olds at their day school is amazingly insightful. Their understanding of the world is limited by their data, but they do brilliant deductions that make great sense, from their point of view of the universe and the odd activities of adults.

But most of all, it is really funny. This particular book is an accumulation of strips, in the order they appeared. Many of the similar collections from other strips separate the monday-saturday strips from the bigger panels that are published on Sunday. This one keeps them together, in order.

It is Really funny.

I ordered "Children at Play" without ever seeing any of the strips in my local newspaper, and wasn't sure what I was getting into. So I was delighted to discover that the art is great, and the writing sharp, quirky and clever!

The cartoons follow the cul-de-sac kids who are each delightful in their own right, but focus mainly on the family of an imaginative, highly theatrical little girl, and her neurotic nature-hating comic-reading older brother (who reminds me WAY too much of myself at the same age). Plenty of laughs here (with a tasty touch of dark humor sprinkled in). Highly recommended for fans of Lio, Pearls Before Swine, and Calvin & Hobbes. Now I need to start nagging my newspaper to add this strip every day!

I had never seen this comic strip before getting the book. I was pleasantly surprised by the wit, and variety of the humor - all wrapped around in child play.

Both kids and adults can enjoy the strips.

Things to know:
- it has tons of comic strips (decent size book)
- Most are in black and white, but there are some in color
- Some show the follow up or continuations of previous strips, while others seem to go unfinished

When I want to smile a bit before going to bed, I pick up this book for about 15 minutes.

Worth it, even for those who have never read anything from Children at Play.

Ok, I'll admit right off of the bat that I didn't much like Cul de Sac when it first appeared in my local paper just over a year ago. It replaced the rebooted 'For Better or Worse', which was one of my favorite strips, and I think I kind of held that againt Cul de Sac at first. Unfair, I know, but I was full of petty scorn at my newspaper for picking up a strip that I had never heard of.

So I didn't read it very often at first. But slowly, very slowly, I came around (my wife went through this exact same process by the way, growing to like the new strip by degrees) and gave Cul de Sac a chance, and I'm pretty glad that I did. The story arc that I came in on appears in this collection, and it's even funnier now that I can put it in context with the earlier strips that I missed. This is the second collection of Cul de Sac strips to be published in book form, and now I've got to the first one so that I can get the strip from the beginning.

The humor is sometimes subtle and sometimes blatant, but it's mostly right on target. I'm not ready to put it in the same class as 'Peanuts' or 'Calvin and Hobbes', though Cul de Sac shares a lot of traits with both of those classics. The kid characters have distinct personalities and all sorts of neuroses to sort through. It's kind of like seeing the absurd adult world through the lens of a 4-year old. It's slightly subversive, and darn funny most of the time.

Cul de Sac is still a fairly young strip, and I really don't think that it has matured and/or peaked yet. It's close to hitting it's full stride, though, and I think it's only going to get better and better over time. It's smart and hip, timely and topical, and I'd recommend it to anyone who likes a good dose of humor with their morning coffee and cereal.

Sidebar postscript: much has been made of the artwork in Cul de Sac. My first impression was that it was purposefully sloppy to some degree, but now that I'm used to it, I see new levels of detail and dedication to comic art. Some of the images have made me just laugh out loud, so I've also 'come around' to the artwork. It's a little bit of an acquired taste, just like the strip itself, but give it a chance and it will definitely grow on you.