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The Daily Comet

Boy Saves Earth from Giant Octopus!
by Frank Asch
32p. 978-1-55453-281-0.
COPY ISBN
Gr 2—5—This tongue-in-cheek, picture-book burlesque of sensationalistic tabloids is great fun. Young Hayward is a skeptic. He knows that all those stories his father, a reporter for the Daily Comet, writes are just preposterous hoaxes. On "Go to Work with a Parent Day," he finds logical explanations for everything from the 10-foot chicken (a Latin scholar with anger-management problems) to the hairy cab driver who got his job through the Bigfoot Relocation Program. Eventually he comes up against a situation that makes him a believer. The writing is fast paced and filled with quirky humor, and the largely sepia-toned illustrations, done in Adobe Photoshop and Corel Painter, are masterful. They have a distinctly retro feel, with bubble-gum- blowing secretaries and pedestrians with beehive hairdos, and little surprises such an Elvis look-alike photographer and Queen Elizabeth enthralled by a flimflam man on a street corner. Make room for this on your shelves, but it won't stay there long.—Grace Oliff, Ann Blanche Smith School, Hillsdale, NJ
Tagging along with his tabloid reporter father, Hayward believes that everything he sees--the birth of a dinosaur, a bigfoot driving a cab, a gigantic chicken--was created by Dad to impress him. When Hayward prevents an octopus invasion it's his turn to be disbelieved by his schoolmates. The joke is one-note but fairly amusing. Digital illustrations in muted-gray tones offset the larger-than-life reporting.
Reviewed by Grace Oliff , Jun 01, 2011

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