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Library | Audience | Home Location | Material Type | Shelf Number | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Searching... Central | Adult | Non-fiction | Book | 741.5973 M655 | Searching... Unknown |
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Summary
Summary
By the creator of Sock Monkey and one of America's most popular weekly comic strips, Maakies. Billy Hazelnuts transmutes nursery rhymes and the golem myth into a storybook about Becky, girl scientist, her friend Billy Hazelnuts (who was created from cooking ingredients) and their journey to find the missing moon while battling an evil steam-driven alligator with a seeing eye skunk. Millionaire fuses the darker spirit of older fairy tales with an absurdist adventure story, throws gender politics into the mix and brings it to life with his demently charming drawing style.
Author Notes
Tony Millionaire (Los Angeles) has been named Best Cartoonist four times by readers of the New York Press. He has won multiple Harvey and Eisner awards.
Reviews (2)
Publisher's Weekly Review
When the mice infesting a woman's kitchen tire of her efforts to rout them, they create a tough guy homunculus from foul-smelling garbage and turn him loose as their protector. Originally possessing a head full of houseflies, the garbage creature is discovered by Becky, a plucky kid scientist who swaps hazelnuts for the houseflies-thus the sobriquet Billy Hazelnuts. Together, they embark on a dreamlike series of adventures. Bolstered by extraordinary artwork reminiscent of woodcuts crafted by a madman, this narrative evokes the anything-goes child-logic found in darker fairy tales and the Oz stories with a pinch of Lewis Carroll thrown in for the sheer bizarreness of it all. Millionaire sweeps the reader along with the protagonists through encounters with a seeing-eye skunk, a search for where the moon disappeared to and a blistering sea battle between a matter-expanded toy replica of Noah's Ark-complete with two-by-two animals at the helm-and a flying pirate ship crewed by robotic buccaneer alligators. Millionaire is known for his dark yet wistful comic strip Maakies with this irresistible cornucopia of unbridled imagination run rampant, he has created a book with the eerie familiarity of a classic children's tale and solidifies his reputation as one of contemporary comic's great visionaries. (Apr.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Booklist Review
Famous for his bad-boy comic strip, Maakies, and his children's books starring benign versions of the strip's antiheroes, Millionaire here essays a third stream of his peculiar creativity in a graphic-novel marchen, or Germanic folktalelike narrative. The title character is a truculent little manikin made by mice out of garbage. At first he menaces a farm woman, but her budding-scientist daughter, Becky, befriends him after replacing his original eyes with hazelnuts. Enchanted by the moon, impulsive Billy runs after it to find where it sets, with Becky hotly pursuing to keep him from getting lost. As soon as she apprehends him, a flying, walking, sailing ship fashioned by Becky's would-be suitor, Eugene, accosts the pair. After more weird science, a sea battle, and a second breakaway and Peer Gynt-like homecoming by Billy, he, Becky, and Eugene reconcile. Drawing in his established manner, with blocky, medieval-woodcut-like figures in action against intricate, frequently gorgeous land-, sea-, and cloudscapes, Millionaire fashions a tale as disquieting-comforting and psychologically ambiguous as anything the Grimms ever recorded. --Ray Olson Copyright 2006 Booklist
