Starred review from August 15, 2011
The single-celled everylad who oozed from the Babymouse series to start one of his own in Squish #1: Super Amoeba (2011) tries hanging with the cool crowd.
Squish's efforts to turn over a new pseudopod on the first day of school look futile—until an invitation to sit at the lunch table with the six hyper-cool Algae brothers offers escape from both his nerdy moocher buddy Pod's obsession with asteroid disaster and classmate Peggy Paramecium's relentless optimism. He discovers the price, though, when one brother relieves him of his prized baseball cap and then orders him to dump nacho cheese all over Pod. Fortunately, Squish has beloved comic-book hero Super Amoeba to provide a moral compass. Mixing framed and unframed panels, the Holms alternate between Squish's dilemma, illustrated with green highlights, and black and white pages from Squish's comic, in which Super Amoeba has to make a parallel choice. In the end, both amoebae make the heroic decision. The authors tuck in some morsels of biology, end with instructions for making green slime and provide another sort-of closure for the main plot—as Peggy puts it: "Oh no! The algae just got wiped out by an Asteroid!! That's so sad!!! Gee, I wonder if tomorrow is pizza day!"
Any day there's a new Squish (or Babymouse, for that matter) is Pizza Day. (Graphic novel. 7-9)
(COPYRIGHT (2011) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)
January 1, 2012
In his second adventure, amoeba Squish escapes into superhero dream sequences to help him deal with the start of a new school year. Varied panel sizes and informational asides let the authors (creators of Babymouse) take full advantage of their graphic novel format, complete with Day-Glo-green highlights in the entertaining illustrations.
(Copyright 2012 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)