Customer Reviews

The Encyclopedia of Animated Cartoons, Third Edition

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"The Encyclopedia of Animated Cartoons, Third Edition" is the best cartoon reference guide hands down! I should know. I own every book Jeff Lenburg has every written on the subject. This one is by far his best and his most thorough. It's updated and expanded. Check out a copy of Lenburg's first "Encyclopedia of Animated Cartoon Series" published in 1981 and you will see what I mean! Animation and grown leaps and bounds since Lenburg wrote his first tome and he has kept in step with it. This edition includes sections on Silent Cartoon Series, Theatrical Sound Cartoon Series, Full-Length Animated Features, Television Cartoon Series, and Animated Television Specials. It is complete. To Jeff Lenburg, I say bravo. Thank you for dedicating so much of your life to this painstaking research so that we, fans of cartoons, can have this ultimate resource.

This is my son's review.

This book is extraordinary for quick glancing, but fails as a serious animation resource. Take the "Arthur" entry, for example:

-Jenna, a minor cat character, is listed, but Buster and D.W. are nowhere to be found.
-The Brain is listed as a gourmand, is interested in science, math, and history, not food.
-Muffy is said to have a heart a of gold, which I guess is true, but she's always been rather greedy, so it's half and half.
-Fern is listed as a musician, when in actuality she is a writer and a poet.
-When this book was published, George's name was Nordgren;however, in season 12, it was changed to Ludgren.
-The "Arthur: It's Only Rock and Roll" special was not a send up of "It's a Hard Day's Night", except in a short chase sequence.
-The Arthur Thanksgiving special was just a collection of "Arthur" and "Postcards from Buster" episodes.
-Finally, Buster's last name is misspelled twice, first as "Bunny", then as "Baxty". His correct last name is "Baxter".

Other errors include:

-Saying that Popeye's name was Ham Gravy, and that he had been a part of the cast of "Thimble Theater" since the very beginning.
-Stating that "Sheep in the Big City" originally aired on Adult Swim.
-Mentioning that Scrat was part of the "Ice Age" gang, when, although he was in the same movie, had separate escapades from the gang.
-Failing to list "Animal Crackers", a show based on the same-named comic strip that I happen to like.
-In "I Go Pogo", his name is just "Deacon Mushrat", not "The Deacon Mushrat". The same thing goes for "Schoolhouse Rock", which is listed here as "A Schoolhouse Rock".
-Calling Rocko the wallaby "Sparky", and saying his cow friend Heffer is his pet.
-Except for two fist season 1 episodes, there were never three segments in "Pinky and The Brain"'s half-hours.
-Stating that Pinky and The Brain, Slappy the Squirrel, Mindy and Buttons, and Rita and Runt were featured as recurring characters on "Tiny Toon Adventures", when in actuality they all debuted on "Animaniacs".

These are just some of many errors. And yet...this book is quite fascinating. Maybe it's just the breadth of the coverage that's astounding. It seem that Jeff Lenburg is interested in this subject, but doesn't know much about it, leading to much guessing. This book should belong on any animation lover's bookshelf. But, be warned. Not everything is correct. I love this book very much, but it is painfully obvious that Mr. Lenburg needs to start hitting the books, instead of IMBD pop culture trivia websites.

This a great book for people that love animated cartoons. While I am not an expert in the field, I felt that I got my moneys worth with all of the information about the cartoons that I enjoyed as a kid and am enjoying now it my senior years. I would highly recommend this for someone that wants to know more about the cartoon series that they grew up with.

I'm going to start this review by saying I don't claim myself to be an expert on animation. However, I AM a big (if slightly obsessive) fan, and it's pretty disheartening when I can spot errors that even someone with passing knowledge of a series should know.

For example, in the entry for the Generation 1 Transformers cartoon, Mr. Lenburg states that the Autobots and Decepticons come from the planet Zobitron. This is a hugely laughable mistake. The titular characters come from the planet Cybertron in almost every incarnation of the series, and to my knowledge there has never been any mention of a planet called Zobitron. This is not some obscure fact either, as Cybertron is a pretty big deal in Transformers lore.

Let's move on to another well-known series: Sailor Moon. Mr. Lenburg adds characters to the listing that do not exist in the series, such as "Emery" and "Cinnibar." He misspells other characters' names, puts characters from later series into the listing for the first series, and even mixes up the continuity of the original Japanese series with that of the edited Anglicized English dub. For example, when writing about the English dub, he calls the Sailor Scouts "senshi," which is even a mistake in itself, because he misspells the word as "sensei!" Later on he proves yet again that the book was not thoroughly spellchecked, as the word "accumulate" becomes "accummulate."

I did not read the book cover-to-cover, but the lackluster research and editing on two famous cartoons was enough to discourage me from doing so. It could have been a great wealth of knowledge to animation fans, but when such glaring mistakes are present, it just tells me that the author did not care enough to do even the most basic research at times.