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"Adventures in Cartooning"

Written and Illustrated by James Sturm, Andrew Arnold, and Alexis Frederick-Frost

       
Image Source: Barnes and Noble

        "Adventures in Cartooning" is a hilarious graphic novel that explains how to create your own graphic novel. The lessons include how to use panels, word balloons, sound effects and more to make your graphic novel make sense and come alive. This would also be a great introduction to graphic novels and comics to show you how to read a graphic novel (see below).
Image Source: page 15

        They cleverly use a princess, elf and knight to tell you a story while also explaining the rules to follow while telling your story as a graphic novel. The text and illustrations work extremely well together to show you how the different format choices made with the illustrations can affect the story being told. The drawings are simple enough to show the reader that they can make their own cartoon or graphic novel without feeling like they need to have incredible detail. There is even an intro page at the beginning that shows the simple things they will be drawing throughout the book to help the reader feel confident that they have the skills to make one themselves. The story also includes how the text choices made will help tell the story when the illustrations cannot (see below).
Image Source: pages 34-35

        The plot is simple enough to follow while also taking in the information on how to create your own cartoon or graphic novel. They do a great job of explaining the rules with the text while also showing them in action with the illustrations. Children will be able to follow the plot of this book easily. There are two other books in this series: "Adventures in Cartooning: Create a World" and "Adventures in Cartooning: Characters in Action".


Sturm, James., Arnold, Andrew., Frederick-Frost, Alexis. Adventures in Cartooning. Illustrated by Sturm, James., Arnold, Andrew., Frederick-Frost, Alexis. First Second, 2009. 109 pages. ISBN 978-1-59643-369-4. 
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