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The Well-Read Child
March 24th, 2009
Jack has a new toy. It's full of surprises each time he opens it. Instead of a Jack in the box it's a Zack in the box. Always unpredictable Zack is a very silly toy and says so himself. In a nod to Dr. Seuss and the Cat in the Hat Comes Back, Zack also has many friends who pop out of his hat and cause mayhem for Jack.
This is a beginning reader comic with limited vocabulary and lots of repetition in the text to help new readers suceed. This is one of several beginning reader comics published by Toon Books for kids. The pictures and text together tell a whole story encouraging kids to read simple words while adding another layer to the story with the art. The art is clean and simple just enough to convey the action and emotions of the two main characters, Jack and his toy Zack.
This book is for Kindergarten through 2nd grade, but Art Spiegelman fans and older teens will appreciate the humor. Zack is a silly toy in the story, but he's also a little scary as shown through Jack's reactions in the drawings. There is just a touch of malice underneath all the silliness. Older teens will get the irony of parents giving a toy that is somewhat scary all the while being completely oblivious. This makes the book a little more sophisticated than many beginning readers. That being said it wasn't too scary for my young sons who like to read it over and over while laughing.
—Erica Moore
Forbidden Planet
January 6, 2009
The comic fan in me picked this one first to read purely on Spiegelman's name. And from a sense of curiosity as to whether Spiegelman, a master of the comic form, could adapt his style to such a different and challenging audience as your average 4 year old. Personally, from the view of the grown up I definitely think he does.
Jack receives a little present from his mom and dad, a jack in the box. After initially being frightened of this "silly toy", Jack starts to play with it and soon realizes the fun he can have with his new friend (who he later finds out is called Zack). The initial scariness of the character is quickly overcome by Spiegelman's visual emphasis on making Zack just look silly plus the clever repetition of the phrase "silly toy". Within a few pages Jack's reality makes way for fantasy and the adventures of Jack and The Box get wilder and wilder, with the introduction of Mack, who lives in Zack's hat and his duck Quack, and the lots and lots of little ducks belonging to Quack. Choas ensures in a very Dr. Seuss-like way. In fact, with its simple set-ups and language, full of plentiful repetition for the young reader to play with, Jack and The Box felt very much like one of the good Dr.'s works. And that, of course, is never a bad thing.
Visually, Spiegelman keeps things nice and simple, with rabbits playing the main roles and a page limited to 2 panels at most. But within this simplicity there's a beauty of design. Reality is a dull, faded blue colour scheme, but as fantasy starts to creep in, the backgrounds start to change, first yellow, then pale purple and finally bright orange when things are at their most chaotic. It's a simple, yet brilliantly effective touch. A child won't notice it directly perhaps, but the visual stimulus of the increased vibrancy of the color will definitely have an effect upon the reader.
Jack and The Box would be a wonderful present to give to any young child. But to a child reluctant to enter the world of reading Jack and The Box, together with all of the other fine Toon Books, may just be the best present you could give.
—Richard Bruton
Chicago Tribune
December 13, 2008
"Fantasy"? We know that pigs don't actually fly, but in some children's books they do and can have adventures, sibling rivalries or new outfits. Children have a readily available path in this genre, from the youngest readers to the oldest.
Art Spiegleman--known to many adults for his Pulitzer-Prize winning "Maus," a graphic novel about the Holocaust--adds another success to the Toon Books cartoon format for early readers with, "Jack and the Box." A boy gets a birthday present, in a box. In the box, a toy, a jack-in-the-box. Or is jack Zack? And does he want to play, or not? Will he trash the house, like a certain cat in the hat we know? Like the toy itself, the book offers delights and frights, in rapid succession. In this book, readers are observers, frame by frame, of what cannot be, but is, and the little boy knows and enjoys all that happens, a world revealed that he sees but his parent's don't.
—Mary Harris Russell, ChicagoTribune.com
The Horn Book Inc.
October 1, 2008
In this hybrid of easy reader (repetition of word and phonemes, short sentences, and an emphasis on one-syllable words), comic (storytelling through dialogue and sound effects, emphasis created by typeface, division of the page into panels), and well-made picture book (creamy paper, classy endpapers), Mr. and Mrs. Rabbit give their son Jack a jack-in-the-box. Jack is frightened by the capricious and startling appearances of Zack, the jack-in-the-box clown, but he gains some sense of mastery and safety by calling Zack "silly." However, things get more threatening when Zack escapes from his box, bouncing around on his springy neck, and produces, from the top of his hat, another pop-up creature, Mack. When Mack, in turn, produces a duck with dozens of offspring, domestic chaos results. With Jack, Zack, and Mack, we might suspect that the ducks have wandered in from Boston's Public Garden, but this is no benign world where a plump policeman keeps everyone safe. Instead, after the invasion results in a broken lamp, Jack's world reverts from anarchic reds and yellows to muted blues and greens, and Zack is reboxed, at least for the moment, in a provisional denouement. Easy readers have been the last territory of reliable coziness in children's books, but this is something new: a primer for our age of anxiety.
—Sarah Ellis
Publisher's Weekly
October 2008
A skeptic might not think that the Pulitzer Prize winner who made a graphic novel about Auschwitz could also write and draw for the not-quite-literate set - but rest assured, this comic gem of a picture book demonstrates Spiegelman's ability to conquer his audience, no matter its constituents. Sticking to his well-developed aesthetic, Spiegelman introduces a bunny hero, Jack, who receives a jack-in-the-box. This jack-in-the-box can talk, and its appearance registers somewhere between goofy and clownlike sinister (see its crocodilian upper teeth); its features gain extra oomph by virtue of being the only ones in a spread to receive high-contrast color treatment. With Jack's parents out of the room, the toy performs Cat-in-the-Hat/Marx Brothers-like slapstick tricks timed to perfection. This book choreographs jokes with an exquisite understanding of climax and denouement. As with the other books from this publisher, the design is sophisticated, making elegant use of panels, and easy-to-handle small format and subtle, low-contrast hues. That the vocabulary and the matchup of dialogue balloons to the action are geared to beginning readers is icing on the cake. Ages 4-up.
—Publisher's Weekly
School Library Journal
October 2008
A mischievous, easy-to-read comic story similar in tone and audience to The Cat in the Hat. Jack receives a jack-in-the-box as a present. Its manically entertaining occupant, Zack, keeps its owner guessing. Fortunately, when the fun gets out of hand, Zack and his friend Mack save Jack by wanting to trade the lamp they broke for a brand-new one, produced from inside the box. While the story is wacky, the cartoon artwork will appeal to a broad range of lower-level readers. True to its comic-strip roots, without the clutter that some children have a hard time reading, this title is a surefire hit.
—Sarah Provence, Churchill Road Elementary School, McLean, VA
Library Thing
September 28, 2008
Earlier this year when the first batch of Toon titles came out I was less then entused. The problem as I saw it then was the the titles seemed little more than traditional comic book fare with expensive paper, better printing, and hard covers. I couldn't reconcile the content with the cost and felt that they were best suited for libraries who would do well with sturdier bindings, not with the general consumer (picture book readers) who would tire of the titles quickly.
Now with the second round of releases I'm finding this less to be the case, but its book specific. Spiegelman's Jack and the Box isn't merely a "a first COMIC for brand-new readers" as it says on the cover, it's actually a subtle and sophisticated tool that helps introduce readers to the concepts in reading and understanding comics. It is a primer on comic literacy at the simplest level, and clever. I doubt Spiegelman could have delivered anything less.
The book opens simply enough with a single illustration of Jack (Rabbit) being given a new toy. Two simple word balloons establish the order of both reading left-to-right and lead the viewer's eyes to follow the action accordingly. With a lfip of the page we are now presented with a double page spread of four equal sized panels. There's the conflict of the first panel (Jack can't open it), the tension in the second panel (watching the box, waiting for something to happen), the action in the third panel (a clown pops out of the box, jack-in-the-box style, scaring Jack), and a punchline in the fourth panel ("Ha ha!" "What a silly toy!"). With a few words and some simple pictures a first encounter with a jack-in-the-box is turned into the core joke on which all future variations will be built. Since humor is generally derived from the unexpected turn, from the deviation from what is expected or established, Spiegelman can now train young comic readers to learn how to read for visual cues and verbal repetition. It's a winning combination and, to the casual reader, a subtle lesson in how to read comics.
Jack now has a series of comic adventures with the toy, each four panels across the spreads, built on the idea of an uncooperative toy and its unexpected behavior. We've been told it is a very silly toy so we aren't surprised to see it talk back or misbehave. There's the slightest hint of Cat in the Hat style mischief, and a sense of a child's play world being realistic to the child but confusing to adults, which adds another layer to the book. As the comic stoires add and build, and the chaos grows, there is a need for release at the end that comes in Jack explaining all that has transpired to his curious parents, the denouement so to speak. Order is restored, and Jack now safely has mastered the silly toy the same way the reader has mastered the complexities of a comic narrative.
While there are other books out there for the picture book crowd that work within the comic framework (Regis Faller's Polo books, for example) there are few that work this hard, this effortlessly to train readers to the art of comic literacy. I hope that Toon continues to build off this lesson with their other titles.
—Library Thing Blog
Booklist
September 1, 2008
Comic visionary and living legend Spiegelman has ignored the effects of Early Success Syndrome and plowed right ahead, finding different methods of bringing sequential art to new audiences in interesting ways. Attempting to match the extraordinary achievement of Maus (1986) would be difficult, to say the least, so he and wife Francoise Mouly have developed the Toon imprint for very young readers. Balancing the aesthetic of comics with the familiarity of picture books, and even harkening back to Dr. Seuss, Spiegelman has produced a polished and fun story following a young bunny's struggle with his new jack-in-the-box, which proves to be hyperactive and rather argumentative. With plenty of word repetition and age-appropriate humor to keep pre- and early readers engaged and curious, Spiegelman has taken sequential-art basics and fitted them to his new audience. Like all the Toon books released so far (Benny and Penny in Just Pretend, Silly Lilly and the Four Seasons, and Otto's Orange Day, all 2008), Jack and the Box is beautifully conceived and executed.
—Jesse Karp
Kirkus Reviews
August 22, 2008
A long way from Dick and Jane, this near-primer tried-hard, and with at least some success, to rob a scary toy of its power to frighten a youngster. Jack the rabbit is thrilled to receive a box covered in stars from his fond parents. His enthusiasm for the gift changes to fright, however, when a green-faced, pop-eyed talking clown head suddenly lunges out at him. Still, in subsequent playful interchanges with it, Jack gradually comes to agree with its claim that it is not a bad toy at all but a silly one- but not before it, Cat in the Hat-like, un-leashes both subsidiary toys and terrifying chaos in a sequence of color shifts indicate may well be imaginary. Framed in one or two sequential panels per page done in flat colors, simple shapes and with an all-dialogue text in balloons, the episode looks like a comic for brand new readers. There's a lot going on beneath the surface, though, and this may have some therapeutic value for older children too. (Graphic early reader. 4-8).
—Kirkus Reviews
Ain't It Cool
August 6, 2008
I got three hardcover books from TOON Books recently and when I cracked them open, I really didn't know what to expect. I chose Art Spiegelman's Jack and the Box first because... hello?... MAUS, anyone? To my surprise, this is a kids' book, and not a bad one at that. It's sweet and sincere and straight forward and everything I'm not used to in a comic. As I was reading it, I was waiting for the punch line, but it never came. This is just a sweet book geared towards young kids and filled with humor that I imagine kids would find extremely funny. The story is pretty simple as it follows Jack as he discovers a box with a funny clown inside. The clown scares Jack over and over by jumping out. But it's not a scary or creepy book. It's definitely suitable for young readers, plus it is written and drawn by one of the most influential creators in comics. If you're looking for comics to introduce your young 'un to, this is where you should look. I could see parents reading this book to their children before bedtime over and over again. If you're a comic fan and have kids, you've got to check this one out.
—Ain't It Cool
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