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This year my friend is helping me throw honest-to-goodness birthday parties for my children, because she’s really good at it. (I’m really not. But I enjoy gift wrapping, and she hates it. We’re enjoying the fruits of each others’ labors.) Last night we made the goodie bags, among other things, and I was apparently too wrapped up in that to remember to post. Today, however, I am repenting! Remember how I quite enjoyed Matthew Loux’s The Time Museum? Well, when I looked into his other books, I found a graphic series entitled Salt Water Taffy: The Seaside Adventures of Jack and Benny. I put the first volume–The Legend of Old Salty–on hold and picked it up yesterday; I finished it this morning.
It was short.
It was a lot of fun, though. I went on family road trips as a kid–some to coastal Maine, actually–and while I didn’t share the boys’ initial attitude, the story still made me feel all reminisce-y. (Yes, I know that can’t possibly be a word. Work with me.) The story is fun and moves right along, and the art is nicely expressive and adds to the plot. (Except for the hands. I’ve heard that hands are very hard to draw, and it must be true–I had to stare at an early page for quite a while before I realized what those lines on his lap were. Once that happened, I couldn’t help noticing the weirdly drawn hands, and that was slightly distracting.) I was a bit worried at the start that the boys were going to be punks, but that turned out to be more of a “we’ve been in this car forever and we can’t take it and each other anymore” kind of scene. Bottom line? Middle to early elementary schoolers who like adventure should enjoy this one.