Krazy & Ignatz 1939-1940: "A Brick Stuffed with Moom-bins" (Krazy and Ignatz)
Grade 10 Up–Most of the stories in this beautifully designed eighth volume in the series focus on the enduring character triangle of a Kat deep in love with a spiteful mouse named Ignatz who returns the affection by tossing a brick, and Offisa Pup, the staunch defender of Krazy Kat who constantly seeks to catch Ignatz in the act. Despite the repetitive nature of the stories, Herriman makes them work by giving Ignatz a delightfully crafty mind for creating wild schemes. Here, Ignatz dons bizarre disguises, hides the brick in boxes, and even creates Rube Goldberg-style machines to sharply deliver that brick to Krazy Kat's head. The vaudevillian slapstick will entertain younger readers, while the cleverness of the characters and fun wordplay in the dialogue will grab older readers looking for more depth. Endnotes help those new to the series orient themselves, while an introduction by journalist Jeet Heer places Herriman's work within a cultural context. This particular volume shines with large-scale color pages of comic-strip masterpieces. Herriman even experiments a bit with layouts, breaking away from the block design common to comics by shaping things around a circle and even using a single image on a page. This is Herriman at his best, and it's easy to see why he was such a favorite of literary giants and children alike.–Matthew L. Moffett, Pohick Regional Library, Burke, VACopyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.