Jack Patton

This is a book that boys and girls who love bugs will enjoy reading. Bug Island is full of surprises. I like that the bugs featured in this book are not scary, creepy ones but cool, fun ones. Max is a good hero. Also he is relatable. Someone that the young readers will connect with and cheer for. The illustrations in this book are great. They add to the story and help make the world of Bug Island come alive. I was so into this book that even though it was short, it was still a fast read. I read it in one quick sitting. I started out reading this book because I wanted to check it out for my nephews but now even I can't wait to read the next books in this series and revisit Bug Island.… (mehr)

This is a collection that many Texans remember from their youth with great fondness. Many of the reasons that educators and librarians now champion the use of graphic novels as educational aids now were anticipated by this series from the late 1920s. Through the use of combined drawing, text and humor the early history of the state came alive and was made memorable.

While the approach is up-to-date for the early twenty-first century, the sensibility is early twentieth century when it comes to stereotypical representations of ethnic groups. This was a time when Jim Crow Laws were being put into effect and membership in the Ku Klux Klan was at a high point. African Americans are coarsely depicted as ignorant, slow-witted watermelon eaters (page 43,panel 5), even when they are fighting for Texas liberty (page 121, panel 4) the term Greaser is a synonym for Mexican (page 159, panel 1), and Native Americans are considered duplicitous by nature. For example, on page 205, panel 1 Texas President Sam Houston proposes a way to deceive a political rival by saying, “We’ll have to work an old Indian Trick.” The summary page of the volume (217) concludes, “Texas was first found by the conquistadores of Spain (panel 1) and “Later it lured the hardy Anglo-Saxon colonist.” In fairness it should be noted that Mexicans refer to Anglo-Texans as “Gringoes” (page 190, panel 4) and there are a number of very scruffy looking representatives of the “hardy” Anglo-Saxons in the book (page 74, panel 4 and page 89, panel 3).… (mehr)