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October 04, 2008
The Latest Round of TOON Books, Part 3: Mo and Jo: Fighting Together Forever by Dean Haspiel and Jay Lynch
In Stinky, you get to page, oh, about two and realize that the book is going to be about Stinky learning that kids aren’t so bad after all. It’s Davis’s storytelling, the route, that surprises. In Mo and Jo: Fighting Together Forever by Dean Haspiel and Jay Lynch, you realize on page one—maybe even on the cover—that this is going to be a story about siblings Joey and Mona learning that they are going to need to stop fighting if they ever want to accomplish anything.
Joey and Mona are hardcore Mighty Mojo fans. They read his comics, they play with his action figures, and they love his videogames. Then one day the white-haired Mojo comes to their house, reveals that he’s “gotten too old for this job,” and offers the children his suit, which contains all of his powers. Rote fighting ensues, and the children rip the suit in half. Rather than simply mend it, Mona and Joey’s mother opts to make it into two suits, one for each child. It turns out that each suit only has part of Mojo’s power, and those powers are put immediately to the test when the evil Saw-Jaw makes off with the hippo float from the town’s big parade.
I’ve been thinking and thinking about why Stinky seems so fresh and Mo and Jo seems so heavy-handed, and it comes down to nuance. Stinky is so clearly feeling a lot of different emotions in his story, some of which he’s not willing to talk about. Joey and Mona fight loudly and relentlessly from the beginning of their book until the moment they decide to start working together. It’s like a switch goes off, and they’re just done with it. If you’re parenting siblings, you may feel like they fight all the time, but the relationship is no doubt more complex. Conversely, even when one decides to try to get along better with someone—and this goes quadruple with an immediate family member—it’s something that happens in bits and pieces with lots of backsliding. In other words? The authors of Mo and Jo have exaggerated and simplified the relationship between Joey and Mona to make sure readers get the point (maybe also for comedic effect, but I found it tiresome). In literary circles, we call this “beating the reader over the head.” And we aren’t supposed to do that to children. Still? These are kids who get to be superheroes. That’s a premise with a lot of appeal, and the comic format is similarly enticing. Kids will read it, but I won’t be buying multiple copies.
Books mentioned:
Davis, Eleanor. Stinky. NY: RAW Junior, LLC, 2008. (HC: 9780979923845)
Haspiel, Dean, and Jay Lynch. Mo and Jo: Fighting Together Forever. NY: RAW Junior, LLC, 2008. (HC: 9780979923852)
Posted by adrienne at October 4, 2008 10:53 AM