If Rocket were swearing, or blowing more, ah, people up, this would be a five star rated book.    But the problem with writing children's books of adult things is that you have to water down some characters, at least when you're dealign with the likes of Rocket and Deadpool.   (Yes, I've seen a Spider-Man and Deadpool comic for kids...)

Overall, the author really nailed everything, he was just help back by this being a children's book.   So I highly enjoyed it, but can't say that I felt it was five star due to the warping of the characters due to children. 

Children ruin everything.   At least they ruin some media tie-in books for me...

Somehow Kingpin's daughter is creepy both as a concept and as a character, possibly more so than Daddy Warbucks himself. 

And yet she adds a perfect twist to this storyline, the wrecking ball that this comic needs to keep going at this pace.    

Velociraptor?   Check.  Space adventures?   Check.   Comic books?   It is one, although not traditionally paced and more painterly illustrations than is usual in American comic books.  Also, mechanical things, although nothing with AI.   (If they did have one with AI, my brain might explode from happiness.)

Got this from the library, and may have to own the two that are out and the third one coming out soon.   Lushly illustrated, the colors gorgeous and striking, and a clever storyline about a problem on one of Jurassica's moons. 

Needless to say, I hope that Captain Raptor has many, many more adventures in the future.  I will read them all. 

So first of all, thanks to Jessica for picking out this book for the last book swap.   Secondly, I was out at lunch with my mom and I had this book on the table.   The woman who took our plates started up a conversation about it after seeing Gelato, because she loves Italy, so she might read this now!

I truly enjoyed this book, about overcoming grief, finding meaning in life, and love (and gelato, of course), and all this happens in Italy.   When sixteen year old Carolina - pronounced Caroleena, although she goes by Lina - loses her mother, she's sent to Italy to spend time with a man named Howard.   This is a man who she assumes is her father, especially since her grandmother tells her so.   Howard says so.   Except why did Lina's mother only start talking about him only when she found out she was dying?

And why did her mother send her a journal about her story in Italy?   See, Hadley, Lina's mother met Howard in Italy when they were both graduate students.   And yet the journal implies that there is much more to the story than Hadley told Lina. 

Meanwhile, Lina is torn between two foreign high school students: Thomas, who has model-good looks and makes his interest in Lina known immediately, and Ren who makes Lina feel comfortable, even when talking about her mother, and when no one else has.   (No one except Addie, Lina's best friend, who is unreachable at times due to being back in Seattle.)  Ren has a girlfriend, and is weird, but as Lina spends more time with him, she also finds herself being drawn to him more and more.   

One of the things I like about this novel is how it treats Lina's grief.   It doesn't sideline it, or act if finding a man, or a father figure, will fix everything.  It never gets so overwhelming that it turns this whole thing into a depressing read, but it does treat the grief realistically, rather than a reason for insta-love.   

It was warm, fun, funny, and also touching.  I cried a little, but I also laughed a lot, and was cheering Lina on as she found out more about her mother and where she came from, as well as where she was going.   I'll be looking for the second book when it comes out next May, I believe.   

It's cute, it's charming, and Moon Girl continues to be full of heart as well as intelligence.   When she gets a call from a lonely girl - in the last issue - she races off into space, leaving a mechanical Lunaella to take her place.   (A whole line of them, in fact, that the Doombot head is watching over for the moment, 'cuz he's in charge.   For now.)

When it turns out the lonely, abandoned girl is a moon - and a spoilt, literal Moon Girl named Illa at that - Lunella has to figure out how to help Illa, and get home.   Except she ends up in the right place, in the wrong universe. 

New Lunella, new Devil Dinosaur - purple this time, and I kinda love him, too, just at first glance - and a new problem: how to get home, again, from a different universe.   Hopefully two Moon Girls are better than one this time...