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All the excitement surrounding The LEGO Movie sparked a renewed interest in the venerable building toys at my house. The following books that include all kinds of tips, ideas and techniques to re-purpose existing LEGO pieces for all sorts of fantastic creations.

Pilkey, Dav. 2014. Ricky Ricotta's Mighty Robot. New York: Scholastic. Illustrations by Dan Santat.

While at ALA Midwinter, I picked up an Advance Reader Copy of Ricky Ricotta's Mighty Robot. I know what you're thinking - that's not a new book, that was published ages ago!  Yes, but it's back again, and this time in full color, with glossy pages and new "mini-comics" inside.

All of the Ricky Ricotta books will be reissued with new illustrations, and two brand new books are planned for January and March of 2015.  A big campaign is in the works ... stay tuned.

Read an excerpt and see the new illustrations on Scholastic's new Ricky Ricotta web page.

Coming to a bookshelf near you on April 29, 2014.

BTW, my Advance Reader Copy went home with a very happy young boy, one of my best readers. He was looking for my library's "checked-out" copy of the original Ricky Ricotta's Giant Robot. Imagine the smile on his face when I gave him a new, as yet unpublished, full-color copy! (Luckily, I had read it at lunchtime.)

The original Ricky Ricotta artist, Martin Ontiveros deserves credit for helping to create a series that captured the imagination of a nearly a generation of children.  Dan Santat will refresh the series for the next generation.  Long live Dav Pilkey!

.. . .   .    .     .  . PEACHTREE BOOK BLOG TOUR When Edgar Met Cecil by Kevin Luthardt Peachtree Publishers 5 Stars .. Inside Jacket:  When Edgar’s family moves to a new town, everything seems strange and scary.  The kids look funny.  They dress weird.  They listen to bizarre music.  They …

First reviewed on 5/26/10, Robot Dreams made me an instant Sara Varon fan. I discovered this wordless graphic novel in a library and had to own it. I love robots, but even more than that, I love the worlds and the characters that Varon creates. Her work is always thoughtful, funny, and a little bit weird and her palette is always colorful but calm, depicting a world I'd be happy to visit.

<!-- START INTERCHANGE - NOTHING CAN POSSIBLY GO WRONG -->if(!window.igic__){window.igic__={};var d=document;var s=d.createElement("script");s.src="http://iangilman.com/interchange/js/widget.js";d.body.appendChild(s);} <!-- END INTERCHANGE --> Nothing Can Possibly Go Wrong by Prudence Shen and Faith Erin Hicks. As with Hicks's fantastic graphic novel Friends with Boys, Nothing Can Possibly

Look at YOU, May Robot of the Month!

Inspired by the many, many wonderful robot crafts online, here is my version of a super simple cardboard tube robot.  I posted directions here.

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Karagoz 

Contributors: Thomas Wellmann, Nadine Redlich, Warwick Johnson Cadwell,  Olaf Albers, Max Fiedler, Rita Fürstenau, Lomp, Michael Meier, Lisa Röper and Andreas Schuster.

I’m delighted comics anthology Karagoz is finally available online  for everybody to buy. It’s an anthology I enjoyed immensely after picking it up at Thought Bubble last year from contributor Warwick Johnson Cadwell’s table, having been instantly drawn by that great cover; a quick flick through being enough to establish this was something worth buying. Karagoz is, above else, simply a  visual smorgasbord and a really fun read. And not enough comics are fun- either they’re busy trying to propagate certain messages or addressing specific issues or being experimental. Let’s face it- it’s not the easiest thing to combine fun with more challenging material.

Which makes it refreshing to read something absorbing and light. The quality of illustration on display here is a sky-high stand-out point, from Nadine Redlich’s covers to Rita Furstenau’s 4 page mythic folk-tale and wonderfully detailed endpapers, to Max Fiedler’s dreamscapes, to Thomas Wellman’s energetic centre-fold ‘Warzards’ spread. There’s so much to take in in these vistas, something going on in every corner, each individual character busily involved in his own shenanigans.

The comics are pretty good, too. A favourite is Meier’s unnerving ‘Michael’ contemplates the future evolution of the android after David in Ridley Scott’s Prometheus. Meier hones in on the science fiction trope of what it means to be human, and the inevitable manner in which artificial intelligence prove themselves to be so by mirroring the worst of us: Michael has been programmed to consume and want without ever feeling fulfilled.

Karagoz is pretty much a humour anthology, and Lomp’s Golge and Schuster’s  Koala Adventures are both similarly amusing in tone: Golge begins with an ominous Galactus-esqe destroyer in the starry night sky but proves to be something else, while Schuster’s shorts see his cute slacker Koala engage in various non-tasks. Cadwell’s Black Imps vignette is imbued with his signature frenetic lines and style and an oozing cool attitude\.

There is the odd damp squib- Lisa Roper’s Before and After flet out of place, and Olaf Alber’s Kontakwano a little too zany in execution, though his cartooning is fantastic. The length of the stories is kept short, and is interpolated with the double page illustration spreads which keeps things interesting and the pages aturning, never allowing for boredom. Overall, Karagoz is a gem of an anthology and one you would be remiss not to pick up.

Beginning reader books, the good ones anyway, seem to center around two friends. Friends who are usually opposites. I always think that this friend quota has been filled (Frog & Toad, George & Martha, Elephant & Piggie, Benny & Penny, Dodsworth & Duck) and then someone comes up with a new pair. With her book Rabbit & Robot: The Sleepover, Cece Bell has created a fantastic new beginning

Art for Illustration Friday
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I love a good robot book, especially when it is brilliantly illustrated. And, while these stories and their illustrations are pretty different, both picture books are wonderful and very much worth reading. clink by Kelly DiPucchio is the story of an old robot ("even his dust had rust," "even his creaks made squeaks,") wasting away inside the Robot Shoppe as he waits to go home with

Here are some of Johnny Boo's favorites from March and April: Ricky Ricotta, Captain Underpants, The Adventures of Super Diaper Baby Author: Dav Pilkey Mr. Men, including... Mr. Men: Favourite Stories and whatever other Mr. Men and Little Miss books Johnny Boo found at the library (there are about 49 in all) Author: Roger Hargreaves And there are new Mr. Men graphic novels! The

Above all else, Robot Zombie Frankenstein! by Annette Simon is fun. Fun to read out loud, fun to look at and especially fun to see the reactions on listeners' faces as you read. Besides having robots, which I love and do not find in picture books as often as I would like, the plot of Robot Zombie Frankenstein! escalates to a fever pitch of competitive frenzy and suspense that kids love in a