Beaky
Barnes: Egg on the Loose (Penguin Workshop, $18.99) is a delightful romp.
David Ezra Stein has channeled the energy of early Saturday morning cartoons
into a graphic novel for younger readers. Reading it reminded me of watching a
Pink Panther cartoon, where nothing quite made sense, but the hijinks were top
notch.
I have to
imagine that was the tone Stein was going for when he started the book with a
cast of characters and then uses them in an advertisements section (don’t worry – unless
you’re the sort of person who goes in for wild infomercials, you’re not likely
to want to buy his glow-in-the-dark sunglasses model).
The story
itself starts with Inspector Cobb, the town health and safety inspector,
attempting to eat an fried egg sandwich and losing the egg from it. Naturally, he goes to a nearby
café to get a new egg, where he threatens the owner with an inspection if an
egg is not procured. This is where we meet Beaky, a giant chicken. She’s the
tallest of the main characters, but she produces normal-sized eggs. This is
never explained, but sometimes you don’t need explanations. Beaky Barnes
takes too many detours to coherently describe the plot. A goldfish goes off to
college and it somehow gets weirder, but it never loses its sense of joy or
adventure. It can be easy for a book this wacky to lose sight of what actually
matters – fun. Stein creates humorous, absurd scenarios and asks the reader to
laugh along without taking anything too seriously.
Some pros include:
· -The art style. This is a deceptively simple
book. It has a small color palette, and backgrounds are often left vague or are
entirely non-existent, but each page balances itself well. It is always
visually interesting and only rarely overwhelming.
· -Subtle jokes. Like many Saturday morning
cartoons, there are some jokes tossed in just for the adults reading along.
· -Remember those ads I mentioned? They end up
being (semi-)plot relevant. It’s not just fun, it also matters later on!
· -While I had fun reading this, 114 pages was close
to being too long for me. For an actual child it would probably be a good
amount of story and humor.
· -May lead to egg confusion for some children.
Parents may need to explain that most grocery store eggs are not fertilized.
· -The name Beaky Barnes is similar to a certain
Marvel character and his sister. My search results were confused while
checking on some details for this review. Not an actual problem for the story,
but check your autocorrect when ordering.
Claire Rhode, a former children's book seller, is now studying to be a children's book librarian.