Blue, Barry & Pancakes: Enter the Underground Throwdown

Blue, Barry & Pancakes #4

by Dan Abdo, Jason Patterson (Illustrations)

The fourth volume of the children’s series of friendship stories for emerging readers, featuring three friends (a bunny, a worm, and a frog) who get into conflicts and adventures driven by their very different personalities.

Blue, Barry, and Pancakes are best friends! They love roller hooping, free ice cream, and going on BIG adventures!

One day, Barry and Pancakes want to go to the beach. When they go to grab Blue though, they discover that he’s already gone. He’s searching for a legendary stone buried deep underground, and didn’t invite his best friends to join him! Feeling hurt, Barry and Pancakes decide that they’re going to beat Blue to the treasure, but they are totally unprepared for the DANGER that awaits them in the cave of the Jelly Gem!

Like all friends, Blue, Barry, and Pancakes can make mistakes... but at the end of the day, they always have each other’s backs. And tops, and sides, and fronts, too!

Feel all of the warm, fuzzy, friendship feelings in the latest installment of Dan & Jason’s graphic novel series.

Genres: Graphic Novels, Humor, Friendship, Adventure, Childrens, Fantasy, Fiction

112 pages, Hardcover

Published June 7, 2022

Reviews

[Becky B · Rating 4 out of 5]

Barry and Pancakes are ready for an awesome day at the beach, but Barry’s day gets some serious storm clouds when he discovers Blue went spelunking with other friends instead of them. Barry can’t enjoy his day until he gives Blue a piece of his mind, but unbeknownst to him, Blue and his fellow spelunkers abandoned their caving adventure for the beach after hearing about the possible dangers in the cave. Will Barry and Pancakes survive their caving adventure? Will the friends work out their issues?

This was my first Blue, Barry, & Pancakes adventure but I had no problem jumping into their 4th volume without reading any of their previous books. And what a wild and zany adventure this was. It was wildly imaginative, supremely entertaining, and definitely worthy of a chuckle or two. Oh, and Barry and some others learn important friendship skills through the story that readers can pick up while enjoying the wild ride. I’ll have to look into getting this series for our elementary library. It surfs that borderline between lower grade and middle grade leaning just a touch more to the middle grade side in this volume. Hand this to kids who love whacky cartoon-style adventures

Notes on content: No language issues. No sexual content. The characters face multiple hazards underground from lava to being forced possibly to wrestle to the death, but everything has an absurd cartoon-like tone and the characters evade burning by skating on popsicles over the lava and such and the wrestling turns into just for fun.

I received an ARC of this title from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

[Roben · Rating 4 out of 5]

Blue, Barry, and Pancakes are best friends. But sometimes even best friends can have hurt feelings. This zany little graphic novel explores the importance of talking about how you feel when your friend has hurt your feelings - especially when they didn't even know they had done that! And it's all done in a very non-didactic way - just a lot of crazy spelunking and wrestling adventures.
I think this would be a great book to give kids that are ready to move from Narwhal and Jelly into Dog Man territory. The books are about the same length as Narwhal and Jelly plus they do provide a tiny bit of information (this one talks about stalagmites and stalactites; geysers; and other spelunking info) but they are pitched just a little bit older. Still the hurt feelings when one friend decides to hang out with other friends. But a little bit edgier.

[Mary · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the fourth book in the Blue, Barry, and Pancakes easy reader graphic novel series. You don't have to read them in order, you can pick up on the dynamics of the friendship pretty easily. The illustrations are really colorful and fun. The text is easy to read with some great vocabulary words. In this book the friends learn that it's ok to have friends besides your best friends. There is some wrestling, spelunking, and learning about rocks. Great for newly-independent readers. Fun series. (Read a digital ARC via Netgalley.)

[Ryan · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is such a fun series. Blue, Berry, and Pancake are best friends. One day, Blue goes spelunking with some other friends leaving Berry feeling very left out and like Blue is no longer their friend. Nothing could be closer to the truth and the friends all go on a wild and crazy adventure under this world. Plus, they learn that it is okay to have various groups of friends and that you don’t’ always have to be with the same people. This series is such fun. Young and old alike will enjoy the antics and colorful illustrations found in the pages.

[Dawn · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really liked how this addressed being jealous of friends having other friends.

[Mary T · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this to my youngest sons (4 and 3). It was okay, but I was a little confused since we hadn't read the first one.

[Melody · Rating 5 out of 5]

Friendship

[Debra Ham · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read it to my son and he had a few laughs. I enjoyed the bright colors, the story was ok.