8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Don't Let the Pigeon Lure the Kid, May 9, 2009
This review is from: Luke on the Loose (Toon) (Hardcover)
The TOON Book idea was simple. Produce books for early readers in a comic book format, as created by a variety of different author/illustrators.
Cat in the Hat with speech bubbles, if you will. The problem? Children's authors often say that novels are easy and picture books are hard. I'd take that one step further. Picture books are hard but easy books are near impossible. To be truly great you have to reinvent the genre. Seuss did. Mo Willems certainly has with his
Elephant and Piggie. And until now the TOON Books have been finding their footing. They've hired a lot of artists that haven't done extensive work in the children's arena, and the result is that they're still figuring out the best way to present their material. And then came Bliss. Harry Bliss has been knocking off picture books left and right for a number of years now. He knows how to make an idea succinct. How to synthesize words into their most essential forms. And best of all, how to make it funny. "Luke on the Loose" may be the best TOON Book to come out so far. Hopping and hip, Bliss takes a simple idea and takes it to its logical extreme.
The first rule of toddler to preschool aged children? You don't let your eyes wander from them for a second. Not so much as a minute. It is a lesson Luke's dad is about to learn. While talking to a fellow grown-up in the park, the man fails to note the moment when Luke, entranced by the sheer proximity of pigeons, takes off with a mighty "YAAH!" Through the streets, over people's heads, around and about and through, Luke is a pigeon-chasing force of nature. While his parents alert every possible authority, the boy crosses from Manhattan into Brooklyn and it isn't until he falls asleep on a water tower that some nice firefighters can rescue him for once and for all. So the next time Luke's in the park? His dad has employed a clever solution.
Gotta give the man credit for the concept. When I was a kid, chasing animals was a fine sport. We didn't have pigeons where I grew up, mind, so I mostly restrained myself to rabbit and squirrel chases (score thus far - Squirrels & Rabbits: 22, Betsy: 0). And kids love tearing off towards a moving goal. If there were any flaw I'd have to say it would be the fact that Luke never actually gets a pigeon. You ever tried to catch a pigeon in New York City? Brother, I would bet you cold hard cash that if I walked outside my home right now I could probably pluck one of those fat, lazy little birds from the street with my bare hands. The pigeons of the city have many charms but speed and agility are not amongst them.
I don't want to go about speculating about Bliss's influences (his website is certainly mute on the point). I'm sure that as a New Yorker cartoonist he'd rattle off your usual list of hoity with the toity. He probably has a weakness for the odd 50s horror comic book as well. But one influence I detected in this book, perhaps unconsciously on his part, was a weird ode to Garry Trudeau and Berkeley Breathed. With his New Yorker cartoons Bliss has tended to limit himself a single panel. Faced with the sheer abundance of multiple panels, however, he's definitely drawn upon the Trudeau/Breathed school of jokes and gaggery. Nowhere is this more evident than in a six panel, two-page sequence where our hero bursts into a restaurant, leaping from patron to patron in his quest for flapping pigeons. The focus of the scene remains on the table of a man proposing to his girlfriend. Though lots of action happens around and about him, our view never shifts. Everything from the old man's spit take to the shot of the table itself screams weekday comic strip to me generally, and
Bloom County /
Doonesbury specifically.
The rest of the book spends a lot of time asking the reader to pay attention to what's going on in the background. In fact, almost more than teaching kids how to read on their own, I see "Luke on the Loose" as a title that will actually teach kids how to read a comic book. A lot of the story requires the reader to learn how to follow a story from one panel to another. And when you add in background stories as well, then a kid not only is reading the main story, but they're also backtracking and finding subplots and repeated characters and images to help them make sense of the images before them. I hear a lot of adults who never grew up with comics say that they have a hard time reading them. To them, I would hand "Luke on the Loose". It seems to have applications above and beyond the initial intent.
With its fast-paced trip from Manhattan to Brooklyn (a helpful map appears at the end for anyone interested) this is a uniquely New York book, true. And Bliss has filled it with a multi-ethnic cast (even going so far as to include cartoon characters like Olive Oyl . . . oddly). This really does feel like a New York title, but not so much that readers around the country will be turned off. Basically it just boils down to a fun romp, a child fantasy, and a great little easy-to-read comic that everyone can enjoy. Rural and suburban. Big and little.
Really the star of the show here is the art, the layout, and the premise. The text fulfills its purpose but it's not the main draw. As a whole "Luke on the Loose" is a fun book and a worthy addition to the Bliss oeuvre. Worth a gander, certainly.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
WIll Elder For Young Kids, April 18, 2009
This review is from: Luke on the Loose (Toon) (Hardcover)
The Francoise Mouly-edited Toon Books are among the best edited and conceived books in all of comics (regardless of genre). It's hard to think of a better introduction to the art form than these books, which cleverly disguise their pedagogic nature in the form of their stories. At their heart, these books are Comics 101 courses, carefully breaking down and isolating what makes comics successful and how to make this plain to anyone. Take the covers, for example. Great care is taken to indicate that this isn't simply another illustrated picture book, but rather something far more immersive. The word balloon attached to a character on the cover screams "comics!" and makes a new reader pause to try to figure out how word and image are interacting. Above the main illustration on the cover are a couple of panels depicting action, whetting the reader's appetite for the book's content and again letting them know that this is something different from what they're used to.
After I finished reading Bliss' LUKE ON THE LOOSE, I immediately thought "This is an entry-level Will Elder comic". Reading his bio, he notes that he grew up loving Will Elder, so it was no surprise to see all sorts of eye pops and background gags in addition to the manic main storyline. This story is also a love letter to New York city, in all its diverse glory. It's about a little boy named Luke who squirms away from his father in Central Park in order to chase pigeons, and his tireless chase leads him halfway across the city, causing chaos in his wake.
Bliss packs layers of gags Elder-style on each page, often inserting famous comics characters into his scenes or having animals provide commentary. The way he uses animals in particular is very funny, as when a dog leaps into his owner's arms and hugs him like a person. I love the way the book depicts New York as being simultaneously perilous and packed with potential adventure, yet still full of caring individuals.
Like many of the other Toon Books, it's remarkable in how well constructed this is, given that Bliss is not greatly experienced in crafting long-form comics. The design of the book (simple and elegant) and the steady editorial hand of Mouly no doubt made it easy for him to adapt to a new form. The long-term effect of Toon Books won't be felt for quite some time, though one hopes it will encourage a new generation to read comics and continue to read comics throughout their lives.
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4.0 out of 5 stars
cleverly illustrated, cute story, May 25, 2011
This review is from: Luke on the Loose (Toon) (Hardcover)
I LOOOOOVE the pictures in this story about a little boy lost in the big city without a care while his frantic parents enlist the help of passersby and firemen to find him. So will you, if you are familiar with popular comics of the past. In the background, you'll find Olive Oyl, Tintin, Captain Haddock, and the Incredible Hulk.
On the other hand, I don't think this book fulfills the mission of Toon Books quite as well as other selections. There are simply insufficient words on the many pages filled with "Coo," "Flap-flap-flap," and "Aaaah!"
Still the story is charming and silly, and extremely well illustrated. It may win over previously-unenthusiastic readers on these counts.
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