Thursday, September 22, 2011

Alien Snow by Michael Dahl

Another Capstone Publishing book, this line of graphic novels titled Good vs. Evil.
This is an interesting graphic novel that got me reading it twice just to see how it changed. The concept of the Good vs. Evil line is to have the opportunity to read the story from different perspectives. At first I thought this was more like choose your own adventure but it's not. The top half of each page is inked in red and the bottom half in blue. Read just the top you get the perspective of "evil" or, in this case, an alien who captures the boy. The bottom half is from the boy's perspective and inked in blue.
Reading just one or the other, does give an interesting perspective but leaves out minor details. The thing I liked about that concept is that you could feel a story from the character not the omnipresent narrator, which is common in graphic novels.
The story is not very long making it perfect for young readers but the concept of the good vs. evil will appeal to older readers looking for a quick read.
Because Capstone is education oriented, the end of the story comes with questions that get the reader thinking about different aspects of the story. These have more to do with the creation of the story or how the drawings give more information instead of focusing on moral issues.
The end wraps up with a quick lesson on how graphic novels are created. This is fascinating, even for the most advanced graphic novel reader.

No comments: