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YOUNGER FICTION
Dan, , Jason,

Blue, Barry & Pancakes

96 pp. | Roaring Brook/First Second | March, 2021 | Trade ISBN 978-1-250-25555-6 $12.99
(2) 1-3 A trio of best friends--a worm (named Blue), frog (Barry), and rabbit (Pancakes)--cheerfully careens through an action-packed adventure in this graphic novel for the primary set. At its core, the story is about listening to your friends and respecting that their needs may be different from your own. But that moral center is secondary to a frenzied chase after a beach ball, which catapults the three into contact with a jumbled cast including aliens, flying mustachioed pigs, and a duck celebrating a birthday inside a volcano. The illustrations feature simple shapes and saturated colors, with objects and characters almost constantly darting around the pages or shooting through the bright pink-and-orange sky. This book is in many ways a celebration of the comics form, and despite the goofy chaos of the story, the authors carefully incorporate new visual storytelling strategies one at a time, making this a strong introduction for readers who are still learning how comic tropes work. The book ends with illustrated character sketches of the three friends. A joyful, slapstick romp.
Reviewer: Laura Koenig | Horn Book Magazine Issue: May, 2021

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