In this series of articles, I will give brief reviews of various children's books my son picked out at the library. Yes, I actually read them; well, except for the ones that get on my nerves due to lack of real value. All of the books, at the point, are graphic novels (comics), but they comprise a range of types, from little kids’ books to fables, to folklore, to educational, to biographical, and more, covering many genres (although he's not ready for horror, yet).
I hope you'll find these reviews helpful in choosing books for your children. Remember, read a story each night when your child is young to foster a love of reading. Don’t let them watch TV or play video games in their bedroom as too much screen time (more than about 1-2 hours a day) has been scientifically proven to be bad for the brain development of any person who is not finished growing (i.e. around the age of 25 – think wisdom teeth).
Regular Show (series)
My son's score: 2🌠
My score: 1🌠
What's taught: teamwork, minimal consequences, fantastical problem-solving (usually involving violence)
Synopsis: The general theme of these books seems to be that Mordecai and Rigby get into or cause trouble, resulting in massive amounts of trouble and damage, and then have to save themselves and, often, everyone else, too. Most often, Rigby (a raccoon?), the more immature one instigates foolish and selfish behavior and Mordecai (the bluejay) aka Mordo, who is smarter and more mature but has poor willpower, gets goaded or weakens and agrees to Rigby’s childish demands. I have to wonder if the creators of this series use LSD, magic mushrooms or THC-dominant marijuana to induce the hallucinatory-style plots. And the worst thing about it is that, after they’ve finished resolving the problems that they (almost always) created, the consequences range from Benson telling them to clean up the mess, or nothing. I certainly don’t recommend these books because whatever redeeming qualities they may have do NOT sufficiently mitigate the negative aspects. Each book has an art gallery of the various covers of the books, which can take up ¼ - 1/3 of the book’s latter end. I forced myself to read all of them, and I hope you’ll not rot your kids’ brains with them.
Hydration: It’s terribly hot outside, so the boys are trying to distract themselves in their home without AC or fan by playing a video game. Then Rigby puts himself in the freezer and punches a hole in it. They try other solutions but nothing works. Worse yet, Mordecai pops Pops’ (I’m not sure what he is, but I think he’s a lollipop) kiddie pool. While they sleep outside that night in the hopes of cooling off, aliens land and secretly set up a water park which, of course, their greedy gumball-machine boss, Benson, immediately claims as his own and turns into a business opportunity. The boys want to go play with Thomas the goat and Skips the yeti, but Benson puts the two of them to work monitoring safety (ah, the irony!), and sends Thomas to Muscle Man’s (a green humanoid) trailer to keep him away for the day.
Skips is goaded by the duo into riding down one of the curvy tube-slides. Very soon, a sexy mother reports to the boys that her son went into a high slide and never exited at the bottom. Rigby rides the slide but doesn’t find him, and then gets into the jacuzzi, where he pees and pisses off everyone, including Benson. Benson demands that he clean it up and Mordecai refuses to help when, suddenly, a wyrm pops out of the jacuzzi, gasping for air. The mom sees her boy, Marco (which is a running gag with Polo), in the ball-tail of one wyrm. The ends of all of the slides turn into wyrms and start snapping up all the tourists. The boys manage to get two wyrms to shoot water at each other and knock each other’s heads off, but this is a hydra-slide-wyrm, so 2 heads grow in each lost head’s place. The boys, Benson and Pops retreat to their house. A brief shot of Thomas enduring being at Muscle Man’s house with Hi Five Ghost (a ghost with a high-fiving hand on top), where Thomas gets a call from “Mordo” telling him to send MM to the water park to defeat the wyrm-slides. The trio goes to kick butt but gets swallowed, too, and the park-alien picks up to move.
The next part of the book is about their efforts, along with the baby ducks (a group of baby ducks who can transform into a giant robot-duck-humanoid with other characters), Margaret (a cardinal?), Eileen and the four of them and a weird British scientist, who tells them the origin story of the not-so-alien wyrm park. Meanwhile, Skips is leading others out of the wyrm park when the group makes their attack and, just as Skip reaches the mouth of a wyrm, all the rescuers outside jump inside and thus, everyone INSIDE combines into a super version of the aforementioned robot, which totally annihilates the park. Aside from teamwork and a great deal of inanity and fantasy that won’t help anyone, there isn’t much to be learned from this book.
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