children's graphic novel review: Kristy's Great Idea

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I grew up reading The Baby-Sitters Club series. I remember seeing a display of the first four in the series in a bookstore and asking my father to buy them for me. I think he only bought me one or two that day, and he told me I could have the next ones when I finished those. Thus began my monthly trip to the bookstore to get the latest book. I began to outgrow them somewhere around the 120th book. I loved the movie, and I watched the tv show. I played the board game with anyone who would play with me, and often with myself.

When I stumbled across news that there was now a graphic novel series, I immediately wanted to read it. The first four books in the original series have been transformed by Raina Telgemeier into graphic novels. The characters were immediately recognizable, which was wonderful. After all of the book covers, the tv show and the film, there are many images of each character out there, but Ms. Telgemeier did a fantastic job of making them look the way I think they should. As a fan of the series growing up, I was amazed how many details of their lives came back to me as soon as I started reading it. As a reader of the series, I was always a little annoyed at how much of each book was spent reminding me who the characters were. Seeing their personalities expressed visually rather than with words was fantastic.

I am not the target audience for this book, but I really enjoyed it. It was a fast read, and it was fun. There was so much joy in the characters. I am an incredibly visual person, and it was wonderful to see so many minor characters shine through their physical depiction. If you were a fan of the books, I highly recommend this trip down memory lane. It's fun. I don't know if the original books are still read, but the graphic novels truly do put a fresh face on the series, and yet, they're still true to the original. Kudos to Raina Telgemeier.

The good news: the first four books in the series are graphic novels. The bad news: Scholastic has no plans to continue the graphic novel series. The related news: Raine Telgemeier has a new book coming out in February 2010: Smile.

Rating: 4.5 stars (out of 5)
Pages: 192 
Publication date: 2006
Source: my local public library

Comments

  1. Marie CloutierNovember 21, 2009 at 8:43 PM

    sounds like a cute book. i'm sorry the publisher isn't continuing hte series- that's too bad.

    ReplyDelete
  2. VasillyNovember 28, 2009 at 11:20 PM

    I bought this for my daughter last month and read it myself!I loved the BSC when I was growing up. I had the game and the sleeping bag too. You're bringing back memories! I can't believe they're not continuing the series. I read all three of the graphic novels. Great review.

    ReplyDelete

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