Bone: Out from Boneville (Bone Series #1), Vol. 1 by Jeff Smith, Jeff Smith (Illustrator)

From the Publisher

After being run out of Boneville, the three Bone cousins - Fone Bone, Phoney Bone and Smiley Bone, are separated and lost in a vast uncharted desert. One by one, they find their way into a deep forested valley filled with wonderful and terrifying creatures.

The Washington Post - Douglas Wolk

As his clean, fluid drawing style makes clear, Smith was an animator before he began Bone -- his images always suggest how his characters move in space -- and a lot of his best tricks are animators' tricks. (The imperturbable matriarch Gran'ma Ben has exactly two, nearly identical facial expressions, a sour grimace and a sour grin.) He has also picked up his knack for comedy from old animated cartoons. A pair of hairy, slavering "rat creatures" arguing about whether to stew their victim or bake him into a "light, fluffy quiche" (while he gets away) is pure Daffy Duck; that the creatures still seem terrifyingly menacing a few pages later says a lot about Smith's dramatic range.

Publishers Weekly

The nine-volume Bone graphic novel series was the toast of the comics world when it was published by Smith's own Cartoon Books beginning in the early 1990s; in this first volume of Scholastic's new edition, the original b&w art has been beautifully converted into color. Smith's epic concerns three blobby creatures who have stumbled into a valley full of monsters, magic, farmers, an exiled princess and a huge, cynical dragon. The story is something like a Chuck Jones version of The Lord of the Rings: hilarious and action-packed, but rarely losing track of its darker subtext about power and evil. This volume is the most lighthearted of the bunch, though, featuring some of the wittiest writing of any children's literature in recent memory-a few of Smith's gags are so delicious that he repeated them for the rest of the series. It also introduces the Bone cast's unforgettable supporting characters: the leathery, tough-as-nails, racing-cow-breeding Gran'ma Ben; the carnivorous but quiche-loving "rat creatures"; a spunky trio of baby opossums; and Ted the Bug, whose minimalist appearance (a tiny semicircle) exemplifies Smith's gift for less-is-more cartooning. The way his clear-lined, exaggerated characters contrast with their subtle, detailed backgrounds is a product of his background in animation, and so is his mastery of camera angles and choreography. This is first-class kid lit: exciting, funny, scary and resonant enough that it will stick with readers for a long time. (Feb.) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Meredith Ackroyd - Children's Literature

When Fone Bone finds himself thrown out of Boneville with his cousins, he knows that he's in trouble, but he has no idea of the adventure that lies ahead of him. After a swarm of locusts and a fall down a cliff separate him from his cousins, Fone Bone finds himself in a forested valley peopled by unlikely friends and foes—laughing possum children, bickering rat creatures, a cigarette-smoking dragon, and the beautiful girl Thorn and her cow-racing grandma. When Fone Bone meets and secretly falls in love with Thorn, she promises to help him find his cousins at the spring fair. Before they can get there, they have a close call with the nefarious rat creatures that not only nearly does them in, but also reveals a glimpse of the sinister past of the rat creatures, their cloaked leader, and the valley that they threaten to overtake. With more than a little comedy and the help of the dragon, Fone Bone manages to reunite with his cousins, but it is clear that the rat creatures have more in store for them in the following volumes. Full of humor and sometimes scathing cultural commentary, Smith's first volume in the "BONE" series presents a novel-length feast for comic book lovers. Although the text itself is confined to the histrionics of the comic book genre, the illustrations are—at times—visually stunning and display a depth of story and detail that far outweighs the limited dialogue. 2003, Cartoon Books, Ages 12 up.

Product Details

• Table of Contents

Table of Contents