Cardcaptor Sakura is a Japanese comic, commonly called manga, that is created by an all female team who style themselves as CLAMP. Fourth grader Sakura Kinomoto found an old book in her dad’s library, when she opened it a deck of cards flew out and disappeared. The cards were created by the magician Clow Reed and are colloquially called the Clow cards. Each card represents a different power, such as the four elements but also things like flying and illusion. Only someone with magical ability has […]
Bittersweet end to soap opera like urban fantasy
I say “soap opera like” in the best possible way. A disinherited heir trying to regain power, siblings facing the potential of having to duel one another to the death, a surprise twin, a scheming patriarch manipulating others to further his agenda, and everyone is trying to gain power and raise themselves in the hierarchy. All this is set amidst a magical tournament to determine which House will lead the Unseen World, the world of magicians kept secret from the mundane. Every twenty years or […]
Three quarters of the way through I finally “got” why cheese was so prominent in this book
In February 2016 two authors, Delilah S. Dawson and Kevin Hearne, were stuck in an airport and decided it was time to kill the proverbial farm boy. Specifically, it was time to make fun of white male power fantasies that typically involve a boy being destined for greater than his humble beginnings because he is somehow special, and all the tropes that often accompany those stories. And so they wrote Kill the Farm Boy. The elements are all familiar; there is a chosen one, a talking […]
Narwhal and Jellyfish have delightful adventures – CBR10 Bingo: Award Winner
My 6 year old daughter LOVES narwhals and was thrilled when Grandma gave her Narwhal: Unicorn of the Sea. It is a Will Eisner award winning graphic novel and marks off the “Award Winner” bingo square! The book is made of three stories in which a happy go lucky narwhal and a no nonsense jellyfish learn about friendship, working together, and the power of imagination. One day a narwhal finds itself in strange waters and encounters a creature it has never seen before, a jellyfish. The […]