Here They Come, to Save the Day….!

Captain Raptor is a dashing hero who happens to be a dinosaur. He lives on the planet Jurassica, and the other characters are also dinosaurs. This first adventure, Captain Raptor and the Moon Mystery by Kevin O’Malley,  reminds me a bit of Star Wars, just in terms of the generals, the ship Capt. Raptor flies with his crew, how Capt. Raptor is a suave and esteemed hero (imagine Han Solo as velociraptor),and so on. Capt. Raptor and his crew take off in their spaceship, Megatooth, to investigate a mysterious flash of light that seems to have landed on a nearby planet. They have a dangerous adventure just getting there, and once they do the alien planet is full of danger.  I love the storytelling style of this–very 1950s science fiction comic book.  The illustrations, by Patrick O’ Brien,  go along with that style, too. Lots of “could this be the end of Captain Raptor?”  This is a great adventure, with the fun twist of the dinosaurs.  When we first read this I thought of it as a picture book, but it is actually in the comic book section.

Captain Raptor returns to the save the day in Captain Raptor and the Space Pirates.  This second adventure is particularly fun and exciting because of double-crossing and tricks.  When a hoard of fearsome space pirates storm the imperial palace and steal all the jewels of Jurassica, the president calls in Captain Raptor to track them down and reclaim their treasure.

We’ve enjoyed reading these stories aloud together, but they are also great for independent 1st or 2nd grade readers.

 

Halo is also a can-do heroine, but quite a bit different than Captain Raptor.  She is in a series of graphic novels by Michael Dahl, illustrated by Jeff  Crowther.  In the first book, Sugar Hero, you meet Halo, a nice girl who lives with her grandma, a taxi driver. On Halo’s 11th birthday she receives a box from her aunt that is filled with mysterious bottles of candy. Upon trying the first one, she is filled with a superpower of flaming fire and zooms across the sky (they are labeled in Spanish, so that candy was “fuego” something.)  From then on she uses the candies in each of the books to fight evil.  In the first one she battles her school nemesis, Doozie, who is a liar and a cheat and has superpowered hair. The other books in the series are The Evil Echo, The Green Queen of Mean, and The Marshmallow Mermaid. We’ve read them all, but the last one is our favorite.  It turns out that an evil mermaid has been trapped under the school pool for years and she is sneaking out at night to eat up marshmallows-but she’d be happier eating people!

The audience for these comics is surely not 5 year olds, but that’s who loves these in our house. I’ve read them aloud many times to my daughter and she will also sit and “read” them herself over and over again. Although Halo has a crush on a boy, there is nothing that’s inappropriate in them. They are a great elementary school comic book series! Halo rules!