Fantasy

With a plot reminiscent of Gremlins and a visual style familiar to anyone who played the video game classic Earthworm Jim, this is a fun read. No real surprises, and it seems like a character has to stop and reflect every fifth page, but it's nice to see the three character arcs progress.

A perfectly fine young adult graphic novel. ( )

It is Cam's birthday, and his widower father is out of a job and cannot afford a present. The best he can acquire is a cardboard box that a mysterious man sells him, on certain conditions. Father and son get to work, and make a robot from the cardboard. The robot comes to life.

Cam wants more, but there is not enough cardboard, so his dad invents a cardboard gadget to make more magic cardboard. That's fine until the bully next door gets involved.

This is an imaginative and exciting story, with a graphic style that adds a considerable sense of pace and action. It has its sensitive moments as well, without being sappy. Highly recommended. ( )

Friendship, redemption and everything good-that's what's in this book. Loved it. ( )

With beautiful coloring and some great illustrations (the cardboard hermit crabs especially), Cardboard is certainly entertaining (mostly) to look at - once you get past the slight caricatured characters. Some, like Tina and Cam, look fairly normal, but then his dad and Marcus and the cardboard seller have uneven exaggerated features that set them apart from everyone else, and not necessarily in a good way.

The plot is pretty good; the bond between Cam and his father is great, and the idea of the cardboard coming to life influenced by the character of the creator is great (and I did like the part where Bill came back as a human). But the resolution was hasty, rushed, and unbelievable. Like Marcus, who spent the whole book lying and projecting and denying, would be emotionally intelligent enough to realize all of that about himself, let alone confront a facsimile of himself in front of another kid. ( )