The Cardboard Kingdom
By Chad Sell
Alfred A. Knopf, 2018. Graphic Novel 281 p.
When summer rolls around and kids say they are board, they can learn from the various characters in this book. Each kid has a different persona that they take on in an epic summer-long adventure in the Cardboard Kingdom (basically their imagination personified in costumes, buildings, and props that they built with cardboard). The thing I especially like about this book is that it isn’t just about their imaginative personas—there are bits about the kids’ real lives as well. For example, the Gargoyle also has a mom and a dad that are arguing and the dad is moving out. The Big Banshee has a Meemaw who doesn’t like how her granddaughter is loud and full of too much energy. The Mad Scientist wants to please her father. The Robot and the Bully (who is not raised by a parent rather by his Nanna) aren’t as good at making friends. Basically, there are a lot of bits that go into the kids and their home lives that play into how they create their imaginative world. Also, there are all sorts of different types of kids—without a load of attention drawn to that. The Mad Scientist responds to her dad when he speaks Spanish—and it feels like a normal part of the story (not a “hey look, we just included a bit in a foreign language” type of moment). Many of the kids are all different types of ethnicities and some give a nod to the LGBTQ diversity as well; however, it isn’t a forced moment. The stories are just a collection of what feels like a real-world type of setting with a cool group of kids. And after someone reads this book they just might want to go out and create a new world all their own.
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