Gracie (age 11): "Bad Island" is a good book about a bad island. And it's a book about a good family with bad kids.
Dad: Hmmm... any resemblance to our family?
Gracie: NOOOOOOOOOOOO!
Lily (age 8): We kids aren't totally bad.
Dad: What was the family like at the beginning of the book?
Lily: They didn't spend much time together. They didn't like to be with each other. They were whining and they were yelling things like, "Don't touch my petunias!" and "I want Pickles!"
Gracie: Oh yeah - Pickles! The little girl in the book is obsessed with animals, and she carries around this dead snake named Pickles.
Dad: Would you carry around a dead snake?
Gracie: I wouldn't carry around a dead snake OR a live snake.
Isaac (age 13): I'd carry around a snake so I could make Gracie kiss it.
Gracie: And I'd bite your eyeball!
Dad: You'd bite Isaac's eyeball?
Gracie: No actually, I wouldn't bite his eyeball. That's just the first words that came out of my mouth.
Dad: So tell us what happens to this family...
Isaac: They go on a boat trip, and they get stuck in a really bad storm. Their boat smashes on this island, so they are trapped.
Lily: In the middle of the sea.
Gracie: It's a bad island that is really creepy. They have to survive.
Isaac: The island has lots of aliens and creatures on it.
Gracie: There are a whole bunch of creepy monsters... which is like, really cool.
Lily: "Creepy" plus "Islands" equals "Cool."
Isaac: Something starts tracking the family...
Gracie: It's a triangle-headed lizard guy.
Elijah (age 6): He's Gumby.
Gracie: He looks just like Gumby -- he's green, he's naked, and he has no buns. Only he's darker green than Gumby, and he's scaly and ugly.
Dad: Evil Gumby.
Gracie: The book switches back and forth between telling you about the time of the bad island and the time of the creepy-alien-space-guys.
Elijah: These big whisker-monster-creatures were fighting these flying-crab-octopuses.
Dad: Elijah, you love monsters. I bet your favorite part of the book was all the creatures.
Elijah: I didn't want you to stop reading, ever. My favorite creatures were probably those guys with the spear-staffs. They say "Mo." Or "Mo-Mo." Or "Mo-Mo-Mo."
Lily: The Mo-Mo's are evil.
Elijah: They look like pancake-pillow-people with horns.
Gracie: They are creepy little Poptart Men.
Isaac: Poptart Men?
Gracie: They remind me of chocolate poptarts with evil brains and spears. Someday I'm going to draw a Mo-Mo eating a poptart.
Dad: How about you, Isaac? Did you have a favorite monster?
Isaac: The Tree Monster is so cool... Its mouth is not on the front of the bark -- it rips out from inside the tree... the tree itself rips open in half to make its mouth. So cool.
Gracie: Creepsters. But the creatures aren't all bad. Not the baby rock creature.
Lily: The baby rock creature was the adorable of the adorables!
Gracie: I would want one for a pet. Then I would have a protector that had grown to love me. The rock monster can't help it if he looks scary when he grows up.
Dad: So you said the family had problems at the start of the book. How about after they went through all the adventures together on the island?
Lily: Then they felt happy with each other and loving toward each other.
Dad: So was it a good thing that they went to the bad island?
Gracie: It was a bad thing, but it happened for a good reason.
Dad: Isaac, you and I have read lots of other graphic novels by this author as well. Is there anything you can think of that is similar from book to book?
Isaac: They're all awesome.
Dad: Yeah, but are there any elements that you would say define Doug TenNapel's books?
Gracie: Tentacles??? His last name is Tentacles!?!
Isaac: "TenNapel."
Dad: Although "Tentacles" would be pretty appropriate for the kinds of books he makes.
Gracie: Because he's an octopus?
Dad: No - because he makes awesome creatures.
Isaac: That's one of the things I like most about his books. They all have really cool creatures and robots and aliens.
Dad: Well, any last words? Anything you want to say to Mr. TenNapel about his new book?
Gracie: Sorry I called you an octopus.
Janie, Pickles, and a Mo-Mo, by Lily
creatures, by Elijah
tree monster, by Isaac
the Bad Island bunch, by GraciePublished, 2011: Scholastic
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