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beths0103's review against another edition
4.0
Phelan tells the story of 3 different people who traveled around the world in different ways: one on a bicycle, one as a reporter, and one as a mariner. The drawings are beautiful but can be hard to interpret in places due to their rough sketch appearance. But that can also make them wonderful to use for making inferences.
saidtheraina's review against another edition
3.0
When I think about this book, I keep having to remind myself that not every kid is a 10-year-old boy who loves aliens and farting.
As a youth services librarian, I try to cater to the kid who's on the brink of not enjoying reading anymore, and usually "dumb" jokes and superheroics are key in keeping a kid in the library loop.
This book is not for that kid.
It's a subtle, inferential book, somber and reflective. On one randomly-flipped-to spread, there are only 10 words, on 10 panels.
In a book about people traveling around the world, I was hoping for something more flashy. More adventurous. More... questy.
The first story is the most joyous of the tales - and the guy learned how to ride the bicycle specifically to become famous and had a hard time getting support from the bicycling establishment. Politics and reporting ethics come into play.
The stories get more depressing from there. Nellie Bly seems to have had a terrible time, and was mostly carried in her journey by others. Joshua Slocum seems to have embarked on his trip out of severe depression over losing a wife.
So yeah, these are not happy, triumphant stories. Things are not spelled out for us - we have to interpret the pictures to understand major plot points.
And so, with my ten-year-old boy on the brain, I wonder if this is best served in the kids section. The stories are mature. The approach is mature. Normally the approach to telling this kind of story is screwball comedy. Particularly when telling this kind of story to kids. And I feel like grown-ups, who will have more of a sense of the context and more of an appreciation of the weighty tone, might be a better audience.
As a youth services librarian, I try to cater to the kid who's on the brink of not enjoying reading anymore, and usually "dumb" jokes and superheroics are key in keeping a kid in the library loop.
This book is not for that kid.
It's a subtle, inferential book, somber and reflective. On one randomly-flipped-to spread, there are only 10 words, on 10 panels.
In a book about people traveling around the world, I was hoping for something more flashy. More adventurous. More... questy.
The first story is the most joyous of the tales - and the guy learned how to ride the bicycle specifically to become famous and had a hard time getting support from the bicycling establishment. Politics and reporting ethics come into play.
The stories get more depressing from there. Nellie Bly seems to have had a terrible time, and was mostly carried in her journey by others. Joshua Slocum seems to have embarked on his trip out of severe depression over losing a wife.
So yeah, these are not happy, triumphant stories. Things are not spelled out for us - we have to interpret the pictures to understand major plot points.
And so, with my ten-year-old boy on the brain, I wonder if this is best served in the kids section. The stories are mature. The approach is mature. Normally the approach to telling this kind of story is screwball comedy. Particularly when telling this kind of story to kids. And I feel like grown-ups, who will have more of a sense of the context and more of an appreciation of the weighty tone, might be a better audience.
alexandradk3's review against another edition
5.0
Very interesting graphic novel. Fascinating stories of three individuals that went on journeys around the world in the late 1800s after being inspired by Jules Verne's book. This book would be a great idea for a homeschool unit study!
bookgirlandthewombat's review against another edition
2.0
I enjoyed both the art and the idea of true stories about traveling around the world. However, I didn't connect with the narrators. Their stories felt disjointed and speedy. The third part was better than the first two but overall the book just felt bland like a text book. I've read other historical based novels but this one didn't do it for me.
katieproctorbooks's review against another edition
4.0
This is a really cool graphic novel that tells the history of three people who traveled around the world in the 1800s— Thomas Stevens on a bike, Nellie Bly the reporter, and Joshua Slocumb on a sailboat.
nadezhda's review against another edition
1.0
I wanted to love this. While the watercolour is very lovely, there are many instances where the underlying pencil was left, messily, and really distracted from the rest of the image. I found myself not really caring about the story or the way it was written. I also hated how the female characters (of which there are like, 2.5 of them) had very little variation in body type or shape compared to the wide array of male characters, and how their waists seemed to always be emphasized. On the cover - if you can clearly see a woman's ribcage (and it looks like she has two stacked set of ribs???) through her jacket, then that jacket is too thin and too tight, to say nothing of what she's wearing underneath, if anything.
compass_rose's review against another edition
2.0
this was just OK. I like what he was attempting, but I wasn't that excited about the telling. The illustrations are fantastic and the facial expressions often tell the story on their own in a successful way. I just didn't get invested in any of the characters enough to care (This tells three true stories of three people who traveled around the world in the last decades of the 19th c.)
shighley's review against another edition
3.0
I'm embarrassed that I didn't know more about Nelly Bly, and I knew nothing about Stevens and Slocum. To me, a good measure of a book is if it generates so much interest that I just have to know more. In this case, though, I need to know more because I was a bit confused about Slocum in particular. I liked Phelan's note at the end of the book describing the way the book evolved into more of a "why" than a "what" book.
I often decry the lack of variety in biographies; it seems like the same personalitities are profiled time and time again, so I am pleased that different figures in history were included. I can think of many great discussion questions that could be used with students as well.
I often decry the lack of variety in biographies; it seems like the same personalitities are profiled time and time again, so I am pleased that different figures in history were included. I can think of many great discussion questions that could be used with students as well.