Shark and Bot

June 1, 2020
It looks like the beginning of a beautiful (and unlikely) friendship. Shark is a great white shark from Australia who has recently moved to the (unspecified, probably North American) neighborhood with his stuffed wombat, Batty. Bot is a Model R-2300 Cutting Robot who lives 0.185 miles from the park where they first meet. Neither is good at making new friends. Bot has a blade for a hand (makes fist-bumping problematic), and Shark is...well, a shark. No one thinks sharks and robots go together, but these two bond over a shared love for the Glo-Nuts graphic novels, which chronicle the exploits of a half-dozen pastries turned into superheroes by an explosion in an underground laboratory. When bullies invade the park and take over, Shark and Bot try to decide what to do: fight them? Ask them nicely to leave? Make their brains explode with hard math problems? No...dance battle, of course! Will these two awkward new friends come out on top? Yanish kicks off this new graphic-novel series aimed at chapter-book readers with an enjoyable mix of goofiness and metafiction. Two Glo-Nuts episodes, rendered in a strikingly different color palette, appear between chapters. Pages on how to draw the characters and character bios close out this genial first outing. A funny tale of awkwardness overcome in big, inviting panels. (Graphic fiction. 6-9)

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August 7, 2020

Gr 1-4-A great white shark and a robot become unlikely-but-fast friends in this new chapter book graphic novel. New kid Shark, who just arrived from Australia, feels a little like a cartilaginous marine superpredator out of water, despite his outgoing nature. Bot lives exactly 0.185 miles from the playground but is "not good at meeting people." At first they have a little misery competition over who's worse at making friends, but as they discuss why they can't be friends with each other (spoiler: water), they discover that they're both fans of the same superhero book series, in which a half-dozen mutated doughnuts (the Glo-Nuts) pool their unique abilities to save the world. There's enough wackadoo humor here to make the upbeat, slightly hamfisted story go down without a hiccup, especially when Shark and Bot take on a squad of territorial playground kids. Among their rejected strategies are "fight" and "ask nicely"-they finally settle on challenging the bullies to a dance battle. Fun side pieces are sprinkled throughout, such as the Glo-Nuts' origin story and an eight-page comic book adventure, instructions for doing Shark and Bot's winning dance, and graphs and lists that give readers practice with various ways to present information. Color art that is a little clumsy in spots is easy to decipher, accessible, and energetic. Though most characters are nonhuman, a few people appear (Bot remembers playing video games with a brown-skinned girl; one of the bullies includes a white boy). VERDICT Shove Shark and Bot into the bottomless pit that is the elementary schooler's appetite for funny graphic novel chapter books.-Paula Willey, Enoch Pratt Free Lib., Baltimore

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August 31, 2020
When they first meet up on a suburban playground, lonely Bot and new-kid-in-town Shark, who totes a stuffed bear, seem unlikely to become friends—in fact, Bot generates a graph showing how slim the odds are. But they bond over a mutual love of a fictive graphic novel series called Glo-Nuts (about doughnuts mixed with mutant DNA), and together, they win over a gang of playground bullies with some impressive dance moves, forming a more inclusive crew. With this graphic novel series starter, Yanish creates a sweet spot of genial, straightforward compositions and highly polished comic rhythms. While the bully plot feels stale and even misguided (why should Shark and Bot have to prove anything to use a public playground?), there’s a lot of fun in the duo’s geeking out and cracking wise. Interactive material appears throughout, such as tips for replicating the “Shark-Bot” dance and drawing the starring odd couple. Ages 5–8.