Tyrannosaurus Ralph

September 25, 2017
Frankenstein meets Gladiator—with dinosaurs and aliens thrown in—in the story of fifth-grader Ralph, whose brain gets transplanted into the body of a Tyrannosaurus rex after the boy is “squashed flat as a pizza” in an incident involving the school bully and a tuba. The muscle-bound Professor Overdrive is responsible for Ralph’s transformation, and he explains that Ralph is Earth’s only chance at survival. King Clobberus Crunch, a demonic alien, has demanded that Earth send a champion to represent itself in his gladiatorial arena, the Coliseum of Crunch, or the planet will be destroyed. With the help of Overdrive and his hunchback assistant, Lugnut, Ralph must defeat his first opponent and prevent Lord Knuckle-Dragger, the arena’s overseer, from stealing away Joona, his new friend and romantic interest. The Evans brothers channel the pumped-up drama and intensity of comics like Speed Racer in their story’s manga-inflected artwork and rapid-fire dialogue and one-liners (“I’m too young to be a million years old!”). The bold artwork, goofy humor, action-packed battles, and kitchen-sink plot make this an enjoyably off-the-wall escapade. Ages 7–12. Agent: Caryn Wiseman, Andrea Brown Literary.

September 15, 2017
A bullying victim saves Earth after his brain is transferred into the body of a T. Rex.Stomped flat by a huge green foot in the wake of a humiliating encounter with aptly named white classmate Melvin Goonowitz, Ralph, a nerdy boy with light-brown skin, wakes to discover that thanks to local handyman/superscientist Professor Overdrive, he's not dead but inhabiting a toothy, if tiny-armed, dinosaur brought from the distant past. Why? Because Earth is commanded to send a champion to join 10,000 other gladiators in the interstellar Coliseum of Crunch to fight one another for the continued existence of their planets. Next to the wildly diverse array of glowering, garishly hued, mightily thewed aliens filling the graphic panels, Ralph looks like Barney's little green brother--but with pluck and luck he not only bumbles his way to an epic win, he rescues a blue-skinned new friend from a sexual predator. Back to Earth in triumph he goes to scare Goonowitz into peeing his pants, then switch into a boy again (in a cloned bod courtesy of Professor Overdrive) with an ongoing new mission to protect little guys from getting picked on. A note about real gladiators of the ancient Roman sort is tacked on at the end. Readers in search of unalloyed wish fulfillment thickly layered with melodramatic posturing and gore-free, comics-style violence need look no further. (Graphic fantasy/science fiction. 10-12)

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