The Jeff Smith/Bone Appreciation Thread

The revelation of why all the bad guys are fixed on Phoney Bone is (as mentioned above) pretty clever. The book’s pretty exciting around this point, too.

The section (apparently) leading up to a siege on the old city gets very dense with the politics and minutiae of the story’s main armed conflict... there’s even a blockade of trade routes and a merchants’ guild (I can’t help but assume The Phantom Menace was an influence, which seems to track with the publication timeframe).

I guess I’m not so into this aspect of the story... reminds me of how every time I tried reading LOTR as a teen, I would get bored and quit halfway through, lol.

(I also should note that my son is reading chunks of the book on his own during the day, and then we’re picking it up together at bedtime; so I’m only reading parts of the story, and getting filled in on what I missed, which obv. doesn’t make for a fair basis to review it.)

My son has now read Bone three times (largely on his own), so I’m fully sold on its gold status as a kid’s book.

aww that's great

Any good suggestions for follow-ups; maybe something similarly detailed & epic? I've Googled around a little, but don't know kids' comics very well (and I mostly know superheroes, which he's only mildly into). Thx

Amulet, maybe?
https://kids.scholastic.com/kids/books/amulet/

Also the Barks books are kinda urgent and key
https://www.fantagraphics.com/series/the-complete-carl-barks-disney-library/

Thanks — Amulet came up in my search, I’ll look into that.

Not quite as epic (only six volumes) but Cleopatra in Space might be up your alley.

I showed the boy these options, and he chose Amulet; we’ll see how he likes Book 1 (I notice, er, that the kids’ father dies in the beginning... *tugs at collar*)

my 2 year old daughter absolutely loves smith's book for the spiegelman/mouly kids books imprint toon. it's called little mouse gets ready. from where i was sitting tonight i could see her face as my wife read it to her and it was really ridiculously delightful. actually pulled out my big bone phonebook to try and judge when it can be deployed. not yet.