February 7, 2023

Swing It, Sunny

Swing It, Sunny is the sequel to Sunny Side Up, a powerful children’s graphic book about dealing with household changes. That book had Sunny going to her grandfather in Florida as well as discovering about the issues her older sibling Dale struggles with.

This one offers with the followup — Sunny is back home, trying to go about daily life while Dale’s absence continually warps the household structure. He’s been sent to a armed forces boarding school, which he resents, so even when he visits, it’s not like it was. She’s no longer as much a part of his life as she’d like to be, although a new good friend across the street assists by providing her an athletic outlet.

This volume, because of the method it’s structured around different events with good friends as well as family, is much more episodic, with short chapters that jump us with Sunny’s suburban 70s life. They add as much as an uncomplicated flow for younger readers, a book that’s able to be chosen up as well as put down easily, with punchlines at the end of many chapters. There’s a adorable infant brother, too, whose goofy actions lighten the mood.

Artist Matthew Holm has an strange tick of commonly surrounding characters, mainly Sunny, with bit parenthetical lines that to my eyes makes it look like she’s shaking or vibrating. Here’s an example, from the very first chapter. It reintroduces the characters as though they’re on a sitcom, because TV comparisons are a recurring theme.

Writer Jennifer L. Holm (they’re siblings) anchors events around a great deal of prominent culture, with callouts to general medical facility (which the women make fun of for all the kissing), Swamp thing comics, The six Million dollar Man, Donny & Marie, Gilligan’s Island, as well as The Brady Bunch. Escapist fantasy as well as light home entertainment assists Sunny cope. (I wondered why it was required to discuss all of these to the reader, then I realized the target audience was likely born 30 years or so after numerous of these shows went off the air. Plus, that method we get a subtitle of a drawing of a Pet rock that says, “The 1970s are crazy!”)

Otherwise, the art is deceptively simple, approachable, as well as simple to checked out with simple storytelling as well as lots of remove markers of emotional reactions. I believe it’ll work finest for those familiar with the very first book, however I’m sure they’ll delight in seeing much more of exactly how Sunny copes with a challenging circumstance while still having belief in her family. Swing It, Sunny is due out September 12. (The publisher offered an advancement digital evaluation copy.)

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