Train Trip

My First Graphic Novel

by Cari Meister, Marilyn Janovitz (Illustrator)

Hannah, Will, and their mother travel on the train to another city to go to a museum.

Genres: Childrens

25 pages, Library Binding

First published August 1, 2009

About the author

Cari Meister lives on a small farm in Minnesota with her husband, four sons, three horses, one dog and one cat. Cari enjoys running, snowshoeing, horseback riding, and yoga. She loves to visit libraries and schools!

Reviews

[Erin Reilly-Sanders · Rating 1 out of 5]

I’m an adult, but I honestly thought it a bit boring. I actually think trains are really cool but the story felt so pedestrian. The part about looking for a ticket in order to get an extra page of words and pictures seemed a bit superfluous. I don’t really understand why some books seem to feel the need to be boring in order to appeal to kids… But maybe kids would be more excited by a rather ordinary trip on a train than me. I did like the “instructions” on how to read a graphic novel, but I found that the text was actually not very graphic novel like, with more of the story portrayed in narration with the dialog as asides rather than driving the plot forward. I did really like that the family portrayed was Asian but I wonder if they were maybe too stereotyped? The art was okay but not particularly innovative in any way. While I can’t attest to the quality of the rest of the series, tiles like “Airplane Adventure” and “Bella’s Boat Surprise” seem about as exciting as paste for dinner. I would suggest that if you want some easy to read graphic novel-style picturebooks to try the Toon Books series rather than the My Frist graphic Novel collection. Rather than seemingly forceful creating a series, Toon books seems to give the authors and illustrators more free reign and ends up creating innovative, endearing, strange and wonderful, and coincidentally award-winning picturebooks.

[Cana · Rating 2 out of 5]

Mommy says: Too easy for an advanced third grader. Meant for beginning readers.