Tiny Tyrant vol.1 Ethelbertosaurus
:01 second Publications presented us with Tiny Tyrant. The story of the toddler king who everyone had to listen or risk something bad happening to them. The new pressing of Tiny Tyrant in larger format allows smaller children the chance to read and look at the beautiful artwork.
Writer Lewis Trondheim and illustrator by Fabrice Parme, give the world of King Ethelbert a surreal land of Portocristo the feeling of Mister Magoo and Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends. The lines are crisp and the color is a little more vibrant then either of those cartoons have ever been on the small screen. At the end of this review, there is a page from the book, or you can read an excerpt from the book.
:01 Second recommends this book for children in the upper elementary age range, which is all fine and dandy, but at the same time, if you read to children and are able to use voices for the characters, you can reach children as young as four. I learned this while reading this to my son, periodically stopping to ask if he got what was going on in the story. He got it all.
There are six stories in this volume. What was going to turn into a single story a night before bed, turned into a read along radio play for my son while I switch between voices and sound effects while he became in grossed into a story about a child king named Ethelbert. My son now wants more. It’s hard to explain a child what publishing schedules are and that another one won’t happen for a while.
He laughed as King Ethelbert demanded that Santa Clause teach his own chef to make cakes with nothing but sugar. Only to have Santa spank him for acting like a royal pain in the end. It was at that point where I had to ask, does he know why Santa spanked him. It was here where my son grabbed the book from my hand to flip back in the pages to show me how the king was acting “naughty.” It is a great thing when a child can learn something from images.
Trondheim, Fabrice Parme developed such a fluid comic language that children can understand the concepts of right and wrong from a character that under any other circumstances would be considered a total terror, to a character that you can’t wait to find out what will happen next in with his thinking and actions.
Tiny Tyrant, like all :01 Second publications is a recommended reading. If not for you get it for someone else(lovers of comics and children(get them in early)). It’s $9.95 and going to be out on April 26th, 2009. Order it from your local comic shoppe or from your favorite bookseller.
