The Complete Adventures of Johnny
Mutton. By James Proimos. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. $12.99.
Robots Rule! Book One: The
Junkyard Bot. By C.J. Richards. Illustrated by Goro Fujita. Houghton
Mifflin Harcourt. $13.99.
Take one baby that just
happens to be a sheep, leave it on the doorstep of a woman who happens to be
named Mutton and whose “weak eyes and warm heart kept her from even noticing”
the baby’s species, and you have the setup for three amusing, offbeat, occasionally
strange and always funny books of adventures – written by James Proimos and
illustrated by him a style that can best be called “arrested development” (that
is, the pictures look as if they were drawn by a six-year-old, and maybe one
with sheep’s hooves rather than human fingers). The Complete Adventures of Johnny Mutton includes The Many Adventures of Johnny Mutton
(2001); Johnny Mutton, He’s So Him!
(2003); and Mutton Soup: More Adventures
of Johnny Mutton (2004). The stories wear well because they are timeless:
each of the original books contained five very short tales, and each ends with
a “Where Are They Now?” chapter that is a story in itself – a very amusing
wrap-up. The stories’ titles are part of the fun. “The Pirates Meet the Runny
Nose” is about Halloween costumes and Johnny’s budding friendship with Gloria
Crust, who dresses as a giant box of tissues. “The Cook-Off” features Johnny’s
arch-enemy, Mandy Dinkus, and a cooking contest in which Johnny defeats Mandy
by presenting the judges with nothing at all (for good reason: he has kindly
given away all his cupcakes). In “Bottoms Up,” Johnny is sent to learn table
manners from Ms. Bottoms, who decrees him unteachable – but it turns out that
Johnny has learned everything, while teaching the teacher his own previous bad
table habits (which she practices with her dog, Mr. Tooshy). Proimos so
effectively channels his inner child that one wonders whether he ever really
grew up. Momma beats Johnny in a staring contest by “tooting” at just the right
time; Johnny and Gloria decide to set the world record for sitting; Momma, a
great basketball player, tries unsuccessfully to teach the game to Johnny, who
prefers to swim in the water ballet (a decision that is fine with Momma, who
says, “Then swim your best”). Readers learn about and get to see food items
such as mutton gravy (“the hot maple syrup that goes over the pancakes that
have a cherry on top”) and mutton pie (“a whole lot of cherries in a bowl with
a cherry on top”). The Johnny Mutton books were fun when they first appeared,
they are fun in this new collection, and they will likely continue to be fun
for quite some time to come.
The Robots Rule! series is designed to be enjoyable well into the
future, too, but in a different way. C.J. Richards is just starting what is
sure to be a multi-entry sequence set in the town of Terabyte Heights, a
high-tech enclave where everyone has his or her own robot and plenty of
programming skills to go with it. Central to the town is the TinkerTech technical
hub and robotics factory, overseen by Professor Droid, whose daughter, Anne, is
friends with series protagonist George, who uses the TinkerTech workshop to
rebuild his personal robot and best friend, Jackbot, after Jackbot is hit by a
car. George, a typical preteen genius, makes some improvements in Jackbot that
soon draw some nefarious attention – from Professor Droid’s second-in-command,
Dr. Micron, a typical bad guy who has everything his own way until George
derails his evil schemes after Dr. Micron boastfully gives George the means to
do so. There is nothing especially creative in the overall plot of The Junkyard Bot, but it makes a good
series opener by introducing a number of major themes and characters (the
vanquished Dr. Micron escapes, of course) and by offering more humor than might
be expected. For example, after George’s attempt to defuse a bomb goes right
down to the last second, as usual in books like this, Jackbot laughs and
reveals that he had actually taken care of everything one minute earlier.
Jackbot tends to seem more human than some of the characters, but there is
nothing unusual about that: think, for example, of R2D2 in the original Star Wars movies, and he did not even
speak. The Junkyard Bot features apt
illustrations by Goro Fujita, who has clearly been influenced by anime in
creating the robots but has not drawn the humans with traditional anime
appearance – resulting in a mixture of styles that works nicely in a series
opener that bodes well for future volumes.
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