Bone: Out From Boneville by Jeff Smith.
Title: Bone: Out From Boneville.
Author: Jeff Smith.
Artist: Jeff Smith.
Genre: Graphic novels, fiction, fantasy, YA, adventure, children's books.
Country: U.S.
Language: English.
Publication Date: May 29, 1995.
Summary: A young bone boy, Fone Bone, and his two cousins, Phoney Bone and Smiley Bone, are banned from their homeland of Boneville. The three Bone cousins are separated and lost in a vast uncharted desert. One by one, they find their way into a deep, forested valley.
My rating: 9/10.
My review: This book is adorable and seems to me as a perfect example of a children's lit in a graphic novel format. The story is simple enough for kids, but complex and witty enough for adults. The Bone cousins seem like a mix between adults and children themselves - they smoke cigars, refer to having lived as adults in their own land of Boneville, and yet seem to be teenagers as far as their understanding of the world and maturity goes. This is illustrated through Fone Bone, who is clearly the most mature of the three, and yet seems the youngest of them, too - the same age, presumably, as Thorn, the young female protagonist of the book. Through the Bones, the story also explores one of my favourite literary devices - combining the present with the past and fantastical with the realistic through two different worlds. The Bones, even though clearly some kind of fantastical creatures, come from a world that sounds entirely like our own - Fone Bone's favourite book being Moby Dick only highlights this fact, into a world of wonder - a world that seems a century or two behind the Bones', but with dragons, scary monster Rat Creatures, prophecies, and a hint of mystery that we get a hint of an idea of, but only just enough to make one want to read on.