Stella on Graphic Novels and Dogs

Stella on Graphic Novels and Dogs
by Stella, age 8

Hello High Plains listeners.

This is Stella for HPPR’s radio reader book club.

I recently read Allie Brosch’s graphic novel, Hyperbole and a Half which is the fourth book included in our spring read.

If you don’t know what a graphic novel is, let me tell you! It’s a book that represents both words and pictures. This particular novel uses both comic book style pictures and has a lot of words typed outside of the bubbles, too. Brosch’s drawing style is part comic book, part stick figure, and sometimes looks like it was hand drawn with a computer mouse. It doesn’t have a lot of detail, but the main character has a lot of different expressions. I love to read graphic novels because they tell a story in a fun and unique way.

If I had to describe this book to someone who has never read it, I would start by saying that it is a book of funny essays and true stories told by the author about her life. Some are from her childhood, and some are more recent.

My favorite story in the book was when the author described the personalities of her dogs.

One dog was very simple, and only thought of shapes and colors, because its brain was empty. The simple dog could not figure out how to walk downstairs and couldn’t be trained, because she was so dumb

Their author’s other dog was called the helper dog. The helper dog was nervous all the time. He didn’t sleep, sat in the corner, and made a high-pitched whine like this—eeeeeeeeee!

I enjoyed reading about the author’s dogs, because I hope to have a dog someday. Even though her dogs were not perfect, you could tell she still loved them, despite their strange personalities.

Speaking of dogs, the author wrote a letter to her future self when she was a kid about my age. The letter was funny because instead of asking practical questions, she asked her future self about dogs, dogs, dogs, and finally, whether her parents were still alive.

If I were to write myself a letter in the future, I think I would ask myself—did I ever get a dog?, did I ever move out of the house? and do I still play basketball?

For the serious parts, the author tells a story about getting lost in the woods with her mom. Her mom made up a game in which they were collecting pinecones, instead of telling the author and her little sister that they were lost. If I were actually lost in the woods, I would feel scared— but only if I knew I was lost in the woods. I do like that the mom did not tell them the truth, because otherwise, they probably would have been scared, and the mom would have focused on making them less scared instead of getting them home.

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