Nilah MagruderRezensionen

My review of this book can be found on my YouTube Vlog at:

https://youtu.be/XADGcvUd4Rk

Enjoy!½

Didn’t love or even like any of these stories except “The Sisters of Angelus.” That one had art I liked and Whedonesque snark. The rest were too short or too grim.

As soon as I looked at the book, I immediately fell in love with it. Everything is perfect, from the story to the illustrations.

Wutaryoo is a very unique creature : she has large ears, tiny horns and a beautiful fluffy tail. She is not a fox, she is not a rabbit, neither is she a cat. But what is she ? That question, she heard it numerous times during her short life. Still, Wutaryoo has no answer. So, the white animal decides to travel the world, surely she will eventually find an answer. On her way, she meets various animals. All have the same question : what are you ? But even if Wutaryoo does not have an answer yet, she learns how all the animals came to be.

Wutaryoo is a powerful book about being yourself and creating your own identity. Everyone has a story to tell that is very unique to themselves and I love how Nilah Magruder emphasizes that idea in her book. She is a very talented person herself : her poetic words are a pleasure to read and her illustrations are breathtaking. Soft colors and beautiful features will follow the reader along the page.

Off the bat, I am extremely in love with the illustrations. The colors are soft and blended which makes me feel like I'm in a dream-like state. At some point in the middle of the story, Wutaryoo digs a tunnel into the Earth and encounters the bones of a dragon as well as a protozoan. These specific scenes remind me about the story of the Thrinaxodon and Broomistega that died together in a burrow 250 million years ago in what is know now as South Africa. In regards of the storyline, I think the main idea is something that is more uncommon for me (which is a good thing!).

I had a great amount of enjoyment watching Wutaryoo go on her journey to find her story and coming back home to tell her friends about the
journey she went on despite not finding her story. One thing I think would benefit is a stronger ending that felt more like Wutaryoo loves herself.

I wasn't totally wowed by this first volume, but I'd be interested to see where it goes... Seems like it ended right as it started to get interesting.

A pretty good graphic novel looking at incidents in the lives of slayers throughout history. The only clunker was the story about Buffy herself.½

Super cute fun adventure story. Delightful and touching. Great art and colors.

This is a good book about a confident little girl who goes looking for a fox. The story is funny and uses illustrations creatively. As she walks through the story she explains a fox is usually here or there, but there's no fox when they look. What she doesn't know is the fox is in the picture behind her the whole time. This is a great interactive book for kids 4-8.

The richly colored art steals the show here. The story is simple enough, but has hints of an intriguing world to be explored and an epic tale to be told.

It seems this is just a prologue or introduction to a longer work being produced as a webcomic, and I wish the publisher had set expectations by labeling this as a first book or volume in a series. I feel tricked when a book just ends with lots of stuff dangling, and I have to investigate to find that I don't have the full story yet.

Mmmm can't quite tell what to think; hadn't read it on the website; didn't figure out from visual cues that Abbie (Abbie??) was Deaf; need more info. I guess I'll get it when I read the next book? I mostly enjoyed the art.

This young photographer is searching for fox so she can take his picture. She goes through quite an adventure to find him...or the other way around.

A tweet from Magruder saying that "it's asexual AF" put this on my radar. I took this to mean that there was an explicitly identified asexual character. Um... If there is, then it's not in this volume. I haven't read the webcomic, which includes a fourth chapter that wasn't published in this book, so maybe it's in that chapter? That said, those looking for romance-free graphic novels may want to check this out. (I sincerely hope that Magruder didn't think "romance-free" and "asexual" are the same thing.)

The story: Jaime and his grandfather find and injured girl named Abbie and her dying moa mount just as a sandstorm is starting. They take her back to the little town of Marigold (and kill the mount as a mercy) so Jaime's aunt can fix her up. The town has been repeatedly attacked by Parasai, people with special powers who take what they want and then leave. Abbie ends up fighting back when a Parasai breaks her mom's urn - it turns out that Abbie is a Parasai too. Instead of asking her to stay and help protect the town, the mayor and the other townspeople drive her out. Jaime decides to go with her.

That's literally the whole volume. I've seen indications that this might just be the first volume of a series, and that could be the case if Magruder continues the webcomic and future chapters are published in a second volume, but there's nothing on this one physical volume to tell readers that it's just volume 1 of a larger story. It's a shame, because M.F.K. felt extremely skimpy on its own and wouldn't hold up well at all as a one-shot.

To be honest, I wasn't really impressed with this. First there was the disappointment of not getting the explicitly identified ace character that I expected, then there was the moa mount that I believe got another enthusiastic tweet, despite it dying almost immediately after it appeared. And the people of Marigold were idiots who seemed determined to doom their town to a slow and painful death.

Then there was Abbie herself (by the way, for those who are interested, Abbie wears a hearing aid, so there's explicit disability rep even if there isn't explicit ace rep). I have no clue, after reading this volume, what her goals were, or why she was traveling. Was she taking her mother's ashes to a particular place, or just aimlessly traveling with them? Although all the mysteries surrounding Abbie should have made me want to read more about her, I found that I was more interested in Jaime, who had a much clearer goal than Abbie (get out of dying Marigold and see the world).

I really wanted to love this, but instead I was just vaguely disappointed by it.

(Original review posted on A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions.)½

This is a cute little story, but not a whole lot happens here. Abbie is found wandering in the desert, injured, and is taken in by a family in the local town. This town is also targeted by thugs with super powers who basically take what they want, when they want it, because they are clearly superior due to their super powers. Abbie helps the town out with the latest group of thugs, and then decides to continue on with her own journey. And that's about it. Of course, there's a bit more to it, but spoilers! The art has a definite manga feel to it, but sometimes it's a little vague about what's going on. Personally, I wish that there had been a little more substance to the story, as I'm not all that invested in either the characters or where they are going, and this may just be me, but I really wish I at least had a hint as to what the title means, because as far as I could tell, there wasn't any clue anywhere in the book.