Two young kids are forced to move with their mom to an old family home in the middle of nowhere after unexpectedly losing their father in a sudden car crash. The home belongs to the children's great grandfather, Silas, who went missing many years ago never to have been heard of again. Upon cleaning and searching the house, the kids and their mother find a workshop filled with unique items and inventions as well as a secret passageway. They are soon descending into an alternate reality of earth after their mother who was captured by a monster. Ruby has responsibility thrust upon her when the pretty amulet she took from her great grandfather's home proves to be an intense channel for power. In search of their mother and in desperation to get home, Ruby and Navin rally with the unique beings around them to figure it all out.
Kibuishi, K. (2008). Amulet: The stonekeeper. New York, NY: Scholastic.
Review: School Library Journal
Hurrying to pick up her brother, Emily and her parents have a tragic accident, and her father dies. After this dark beginning, the story skips forward two years to when the remaining family members are forced to move to an ancestral house in a small town. Rumored to be haunted, it is unkempt and forbidding. The first night there, Emily's mother goes down to the basement to investigate a noise and doesn't return. The kids search for her and discover a doorway into another world, where their mother has been swallowed by a monster and is being taken away. An amulet that Emily found in the house tells her that together they can save her, but her brother isn't so sure that this voice can be trusted. Still, what other choice do they have in this strange place? Gorgeous illustrations with great color bring light to this gloomy tale. Filled with excitement, monsters, robots, and mysteries, this fantasy adventure will appeal to many readers, but it does have some truly nightmarish elements.
Rutherford, D. (2008). The stonekeeper. School Library Journal, 54(1), 152.
My Impressions:
Amulet is well organized with appropriate flow from one stage or event to the next. The illustrations are crisp in execution but still filled with warmth to make it approachable and cozy. However, visual appeal aside, the story is very direct and moves quickly from one happening to the next. With the right amount of dialogue to feel natural and productive, Amulet strikes a nice balance between comics and prose. The characters feel possible and their feelings seem believable. Action packed on almost every page, Amulet is a great representation of what middle grade graphic novels should look and feel like. There is enough depth in character and story to occupy the emotional needs of middle-schoolers while still not so deep that they feel bogged down by long text or hyper-detailed story.
Library Use:
Amulet could be used as a guiding material for students to work on synthesize and revision. The story feels very complete and filled out in Amulet, but when you examine the number of words used or conversations had, much more is said through the images than the words of the characters. Students could replicate their own story in graphic novel format where they determine the lines for the panels and the story they want to tell. You could give them a letter character limit so they're forced to whittle down their thoughts and ideas into small verbal phrases and fill out their story with images and illustrations instead. It could be taken one step further by taking an existing narrative story they'd written and transforming it into a graphic novel representation as a form of revision.
Amulet could be used as a guiding material for students to work on synthesize and revision. The story feels very complete and filled out in Amulet, but when you examine the number of words used or conversations had, much more is said through the images than the words of the characters. Students could replicate their own story in graphic novel format where they determine the lines for the panels and the story they want to tell. You could give them a letter character limit so they're forced to whittle down their thoughts and ideas into small verbal phrases and fill out their story with images and illustrations instead. It could be taken one step further by taking an existing narrative story they'd written and transforming it into a graphic novel representation as a form of revision.
No comments:
Post a Comment