Customer Reviews

Horse Racing

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"Horse Racing" is not your typical sports cartoon book. Instead of making fun of a particular player or incident, Charles Hellman and Robert Tiritilli have taken everyday horse racing terms (like "longshot," "sleeper," and "off track"), and phrases (like "win machine" and "loves off track") and turned them into often hilarious comic drawings.

The humor in these comics comes from knowing what the terms and phrases really mean. If you know what a "photo-finish" is, then the picture of an artist quickly drawing the horses as they cross the finish line (photo-finish..... get it?) is very funny. One of my personal favorites is a play on the phrase "1st time starter" (the cartoon has a horse with training wheels on it). The more phrases you know, the funnier the drawings will be to you.

There are a couple of drawbacks to "Horse Racing," however, which keeps it from hitting a home run.

First of all, it only takes about 15-20 minutes to read the book from start to finish. At the current price of just under ten dollars, this comes to reading approximately fifty-cents worth of book a minute. There is a sinking feeling that comes over you when you realize you bought a book that could have been read while browsing through the bookstore.

Second of all, with the exception of the front and back cover, all of the comics are in black-and-white. The covers have great color to them and are so much better, not to mention a little funnier, than their corresponding black-and-white counterparts. As enjoyable as the book is in its current format, it would have been quite a bit better had each of the drawings been in color.

Despite how funny this comical look at horse racing is, I really can't recommend buying this book for yourself. The quick reading time and lack of color drawings will result in a feeling of disappointment when you finish.

That being said, I think "Horse Racing" would make a great gift book to buy for the horse better in your family. They will thoroughly enjoy the comical look at the sport. And hey.... you can always read it yourself before you wrap it up. They'll never know.