Mighty Alice Goes Round and Round: A Cul de Sac Book

Gr 5–8—Thompson follows in the tradition of Charles M. Schulz's Peanuts and Bill Watterson's Calvin and Hobbes in this comic strip about a precocious child with a sharp wit and a strong imagination. Alice is four years old and lives in a suburban community named Cul de Sac. She attends the Blisshaven Academy preschool, where she impatiently learns the shape of the day and her teacher's whitewashed Mother Goose rhymes, one in which Humpty Dumpty "uses caution and care" to "sit on a chair." Alice and her fellow preschoolers are a little darker, preferring to prepare for the zombie apocalypse, train bees to follow their bidding, and never get caught looking "cute." The scrawled text, wavey lines, and caricatured cartoon style once again recall Calvin and Hobbes. This witty look at childhood might actually appeal most to parents, but tweens and even teens should appreciate the surreal humor and sarcastic dialogue.—Lisa Goldstein, Brooklyn Public Library, NY