BSC Graphic Novels: Kristy's Big Day

I don't think I've done reviews of any of the BSC graphic novels, but trust me, they're great. I recently got the first four in color (I had bought the original black and whites) not long after the fifth one came out. Well, now the sixth one is here!

I grew up on the BSC. I'm a huge fan. Big-time nostalgia. I loved the first four graphic novels and I was thrilled when they decided to continue the series.

Now the comics have hopped around a bit. The first one matched the first BSC book, but then they skipped book #2 and book #3 became the second graphic novel. Book #4 was the third and then it jumped all the way to book #7 for the fourth. They wanted one with Claudia as the lead and they decided not to make it book #2. When it came time for graphic novel #5, they went back to book #5, while also adding Mallory to the cast, borrowing events from book #14, which is set after Stacey moves back to New York City. So now we've come to graphic novel #6 and it matches up with book #6, except they added Mallory into the cast, which is fine with me. Book #6 happens to be one of my favorites of the early BSC books, so I was really excited for this.

I was surprised at how many times I burst out laughing while reading this. They really went all out with the funny situations and expressions on the characters. So instead of me doing a normal review, I'm going to share the funniest parts of the book!

Forgive my photos. I was too lazy to scan these, so I just used my camera. And then was too lazy to crop them better.

Here's Kristy's mom freaking out when she realizes they have to plan a wedding and plan a move in very minimal time.

In this scene, Kristy has just told the BSC about her idea: the six of them watching the 14 kids that will be around during the wedding planning. It sounds like a load of work, but the bonus is that they're being paid double their usual rate from 9-5 for multiple days.

This is Claudia's reaction to that amount of money.

And here she is trying the tactic on Mary Anne.

Mallory is stinkin' adorable. I love her. And their faces in the last panel while they're trying to get Mary Anne on board with this plan.

EVERY BIT OF THIS IS GOLD.

And it continues.

Kristy's pep talk to herself had me dying.

And this. OMG. Her face. That is kind of a duh, Watson.

Exhausted after Day One. I love how Stacey's got her likely sweaty bare feet all over Claudia. Kristy's just faceplanted.

Dawn is 100% over Karen.

Kristy threatening the boys to behave during the barbershop scene.

And the not often seen rage of Mary Anne on the previous page.

I just love all this. I laughed so many times! Get these. Read them all. Join me in laughing. And then cross your fingers that we get to go to Sea City soon!

EMMA CARROLL 2

Yeah, it's just one book. I haven't bought any others yet. But I will.

I wanted to say a quick few words about this before I forgot. It's already been a few days since I finished this.

In Darkling Wood is an interesting yet highly frustrating book. It's one of those where it has to be illogical to make sense. The main plot is even illogical. Alice has been helping take care of her sick younger brother for ages, after her father abandoned the family, yet she's shipped off to live with her bizarro paternal grandmother while her brother gets a heart transplant. Sending her away during the school year just makes no sense to me. There's really no reason that something else could not have been worked out. The adults also spend far too much time hiding things from Alice and treating her like she hasn't been instrumental in helping her little brother.

Then the grandmother is a useless trip who neither wants to nor properly knows how to care for a child. There's not even enough food in the house and she continually shuts Alice out when poor Alice needs a stable environment the most. I really disliked the grandmother. I still do, even after the book's ending, because her actions were explained, but that doesn't make her behavior any less shitty.

The people in town are all pissy because Alice's grandmother is trying to tear down the old woods around her house and they take it out on Alice.

I honestly think Alice acts like more of an adult than every single actual adult in this book and I haaaaaaaaaaaaate that. I consider it pretty bad writing really.

I did like the character of Flo though and her twist is a good one. Max, the one friend Alice makes, is also a good character.

I just wish Carroll could have figured out how to tell this story without making every adult in it act poorly.

EMMA CARROLL 1

I discovered author Emma Carroll through an ad for her newest book in a post by one of the many Egyptian things I follow on either Twitter or Facebook. Annoyingly, a lot of her books cannot just be purchased via Amazon. I had to hit ebay for the newest one. But I did get The Snow Sister and Strange Star from Amazon. I received those before the newest book, the one I was actually most interested in, so I read them first.

The Snow Sister is a very short book for younger readers than Carroll's other works. She doesn't shy away from darker elements in her stories, so the young girl protagonist has a dead older sister that she recreates in snow before Christmas. She comes from a poor family with a newly-deceased rich uncle who left something to his brother, the girl's father. As her father goes to find out what, the family assumes they'll be rich. The girl sets out to get pudding ingredients at the store and through a series of misadventures, ends up spending the night in the home of the wealthiest family in town, where she learns that family and love are more important than money. She also learns that it's this dude who inherited her uncle's fortune. When she gets home, she learns her family got...the uncle's daughter. They're happy to have a new person in their family, a semi-replacement for the dead older sister, and he left some jewelry behind to be sold to help pay for her upkeep, but I don't like any of this. Why leave your fortune to some dickbag rich dude you mentored when you could leave it for YOUR CHILD? Just make it where she can't access it until she's older. I hope there's enough jewelry there to take care of her for years, because they're gonna need it.

So not the best thoughts about this author going into the second book. This one's a pretty wild ride. The framing and concluding chapters take place at the Villa Diodati, during the famous gathering of Lord Byron and the Shelleys. The central and main part of the story is from the POV of a young girl who, along with her mother, was struck by lightning. There are mysterious animal disappearances and deaths, a comet in the sky, an elusive creepy scientist...who turns out not to be the scientist in the story after all. It's an interesting tale and much better than the Snow Sister. I don't want to give too much away, but all these events lead Mary Shelley to write her famous work.

Ah, finally we get to the one I wanted to read most. This is set in Egypt as Howard Carter is finding the tomb of the now-legendary King Tut. This one's an excellent journey with solid characters, a twisting backstory that resolves in a pretty unbelievable way, curses, and portions of the story set in ancient Egypt. The whole thing is extremely unbelievable. You've just got to set that aside.

As an Egyptologist, two things did bother me.

First, the author uses "hieroglyphics." This is not a word. Hieroglyphic is the writing system. One glyph is a hieroglyph. Multiple glyphs are hieroglyphs. Likely some would argue that "hieroglyphics" has become so commonly used that it has become a word, but that's a load. If you're writing about Egypt and you want to sound like you did a lick of research, never ever use "hieroglyphics." I mean, unless you're writing for a character that is meant to sound uneducated and it's a conscious decision to use the incorrect word. I wouldn't mind the young girl that's the POV using it if it was ever made clear in the text that it's not the correct term. Regardless, whenever I see it, it ruins the story by taking me right out of it, and I just sit and wonder how much research was done if this bad an error was made.

Second, the canopic jar that's the focus of the protagonist's problem is described as having the head of Anubis. I kept waiting for this to be dealt with. It never was. You see, the four canopic jar heads are a human, a falcon, a baboon and yes, a jackal. But this jackal is NOT Anubis. It's Duamutef. It's a mistake someone who didn't know much would make, because yeah, he looks just like Anubis. So when it first happened, I was okay with her not knowing the proper deity on the jar, but as the story went on, it was revealed that the jar held the heart. The heart is not typically removed during mummification, so there is no jar for it. It was never said if the character who put the heart in the jar just used a random Duamutef one or maybe had a special jar he had made for this purpose and did put Anubis's head on it.

Not things that would bother the average reader, but both took me out of the story a bit, because I know how things should be. (And I get annoyed when people don't research properly.)

The story itself is an excellent ride and I do recommend giving this a read. You likely won't be as bothered by the errors as I was, but hey, at least you know the right information now.