Remember when I said I was obsessed with Ben Hatke's work? This is the little guy that started it all:
benhatke.com
Well, minus the star. I first became aware of Little Robot when it showed up as a lightning deal on Amazon.com. I have a daughter who loves robots, the artwork looked cool and I figured it was worth a go.
I love it. The artwork is fairly glorious. It's faintly reminiscent of Lilo & Stitch, but different enough that you don't feel like he's copying anybody's style. The story is fun. It's about friendship; making new friends, and being a good one. And about love. Loving your friends, and loving humankind...well, robot-kind. But there's an applicable message here! And there are almost no words.
Little Robot is a graphic novel. It is fun to sit down with your little ones and talk about the pictures, and see the story. Little Robot gave me a whole new respect for graphic novels, and art as a literary device. For the most part I've pretty much ignored graphic novels as books for kids who hate reading (I still think they're great for that, by the way), but as an avid and constant reader, I more than enjoyed this book, I adored it.
I immediately proceeded to my local library (well, sort of immediately...I impatiently sent my husband to the library, where he found one, but not both of the Hatke books available, and made him take me to the library a few days later so I could hunt down the other one.) to read more. I pored over his entire blog, inhaling his artwork. I preordered three of Ben Hatke's upcoming books. And I vowed that I will one day own the Zita trilogy (Also amazing...at least one and three are. I didn't notice three wasn't two until I was most of the way through with it...which kind of cleared up my criticism of his plot holes; turns out I had the wrong book! Sadly, my library doesn't have number two. Why?!?), which I'm a little bit obsessed with right now, and Julia's House for Lost Creatures.
If I have any criticism, it would be that you see a lot of the same characters repeated throughout Mr. Hatke's work, and it can make his world seem a little small. But it's actually something fun too, because it's a little bit like playing I Spy.
I was in no way compensated for this review, or my obsession with Mr. Hatke's artwork, but if his publishing company, First Second, ever wants a family-oriented advance copy reader, I would be more than happy to oblige.
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