Review: CatStronauts Mission Moon

written and illustrated by Drew Brockington

Story 4/5 stars

Recommended age: All ages!!! Best for reading with your kid(s) or independent readers up to middle school

As a space geek I am always attempting to show my son how the awesomeness of everything space. This means I have dragged him to the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum twice in the 5 years he’s been around (we do not live near DC), taken him to a local Planetarium, made him watch Apollo 13 with me, gone with him to the Kennedy Space Center (I tear up every time I see space shuttle Atlantis), and generally geeked out on all things space. Finally, I was gratified to hear he told his teacher he wants to build rockets when he grows up – previous future jobs have included Batman, the Doctor, and Lego builder.

In all seriousness I don’t actually care what he does when he grows up as long as her sticks with the morals he’s learned from Star Trek TNG and comic books. Oh, and as long as he can generally support himself because I don’t want him living in the basement when he’s 35 or whatever. Still, I was pretty excited that he’s been on a rocket building career kick the past month or so and I found this great all ages comic book, CatStronauts, to work with his interests.

First, the good.

This book was a lot of fun. The art is appealing and accessible. My son easily followed the plot and really liked the various characters (especially Waffles, the pilot, and Blanket, the robotics expert). The book had easy to understand jokes for a young kid and was still entertaining for me to read – because it let me geek out on space stuff! My son has even quoted the story and told other people about it so I know he really enjoyed it.

The characters are cute. Waffles is always hungry leading to some mischief and Blanket is building a robot during training without permission. Major Meowser is a pretty straight forward mission commander, and Pom Pom doesn't get much of a chance to shine in this book but I hope the characters will become more developed in the other stories. 

I loved the premise of the story as well. The cats have to return to the moon to build a device that will help provide energy to the Earth so all the power doesn’t go out forever. All the mission training the CatStronauts go through was decently researched. The launch and trip to the moon (and back) were based on fairly accurate information from the Apollo missions. Basically, I was super excited to have such a fun and kid friendly way to teach Henry about the moon missions.

The story also includes problems with the mission somewhat reminiscent of the Apollo 13 mission (along with problem solving strategies). My son's favorite page is below. For whatever reason Waffles saying "prepare for lunch" cracked him up over a few days.

Now, the bad

Not a whole heck of a lot!

My only complaint is none of the astronaut characters appear to be lady cats. However, the head of mission control is a lady cat so that's cool. Also, you can only tell because the ladies have visible eyelashes so who knows, maybe I'm mistaken and Pom Pom the mission specialist is a lady cat. It's a minor quibble.

Beyond that, it’s not really a book most adults would enjoy reading more than once unless they want some very light reading. However, if you want a fun, entertaining, and even somewhat educational book to read with your kid(s) -or a book for maybe up to middle school for an independent reader – this is an exceptional choice. We will definitely be purchasing other books in this series. The next one up is about the CatStronauts going to Mars - I am super excited!

Bottom line: A+

Free Comic Book Day Highlights

Several Small Reviews

So, I just wrapped up my first turbulent and intriguing year of graduate school and I am still winding down from everything. I’ve spent the past semester learning more about the human skeleton than I thought was possible and managed to name my 20-page research paper from my lithics class with a comic book reference. Next week I’ll be immersed in finishing up as much of my museum work as possible before diving into an intense self-directed study of Pompeii. Only 2 ½ weeks until I leave for Italy for field work! Whew, I am exhausted. Due to this I’ll just be highlighting a few comic book encounters from the past month.

First up, Free Comic Book Day!

My husband, son, and I checked out both of the local comic book stores in our new town and ended up going to the one that not have a line down the street. It was a nice setup and a Spiderman cosplayer gave my son a high five. The store itself was great and had additional sales to go along with FCBD. We got 4 free comics each (which was plenty) and picked up a Mouse Guard alphabet book.

My son can read at this point (level 1 stuff, nothing fancy, but beyond needing an alphabet book) however, this book has neat little Mouse Guard blurbs with each letter and the art is gorgeous. My son loves Mouse Guard and since I always try to purchase something from the store hosting FCBD it was MG or the BB-8 cook book and the recipes did not look exciting (I think my son just liked the pictures). After spending some time with the alphabet book, I feel like it was a good purchase. 

Caution to other parents: Mouse Guard isn’t really made for children. It may look like a child’s book at a glance, but it contains a lot of warfare and death. My son started going through Mouse Guard at age 4 and frequently requests it, but there were quite a few story points he struggled with. He’s still upset about Conrad’s final encounter with the crabs from story arc one. Even so, if they can deal with Mufasa’s death in the Lion King it should be mostly okay.

The other books we picked up that were worth noting are: The Wormwood Saga and Sparks.

The Wormwood Saga was interesting enough that I’d like to pick up further issues at some point. It is definitely all-ages as advertised but the art is oriented towards a young crowd used to animation. Don’t get me wrong, the art is appealing, just somewhat simplistic for my tastes. My son found it easy enough to follow the story though and that’s important for young people reading comics. It seems to be a fairly standard magical fantasy world adventure story (think of the Spiderwick Chronicles, Narnia, and Terebithia type genre). A young boy’s father can create paintings that are portals to another world and the boy shows this to a girl he wants to be friends with to impress her. He’s not supposed to share this with anyone so I’m sure that will go really well for him as the story progresses. Regardless of the seeming predictability, I like this type of genre and would hope the story branches out a bit more as it goes.

Sparks! was the true winner of our FCBD excursion. It hit a lot of high points for my son – cats in a dog robot trying to be heroes. The dog robot even puts out a fire by “peeing” on it. As you can imagine, my 5-year-old was cracking up while reading this book. The art is cartoony, but cute. The whole story is narrated by a sentient litter box and the villain is an alien hiding out as a human infant. This story is definitely for younger kids but it is a lot of fun with likable characters.

Thor: Ragnarok

I just saw this for the first time 2 days ago while decompressing from finals. I’m not a big Thor fan but I adore Tom Hiddleston as Loki so I keep watching these movies. First, I still love Loki, never stop stabbing people in the back sir. Besides that, this movie really tried to hard. It was entertaining but seemed to be trying to be sarcastic and funny in a way that works for Guardians of the Galaxy, but not for Thor. I get that the Thor movies aren’t as popular but trying to make it into something it isn’t doesn’t make anything better. Also, does anyone like Bruce Banner? Yuck. My son enjoyed Hulk’s fight with the giant wolf and the overall story was okay.

That’s about it for the past month. Most of it was class work, not much time for comics.

Happy Mother’s Day!

Raising Kids with Comic Books

It’s no secret that I was raised in a comic book store. I attribute my strong early verbal skills to comic books as well as some of my sense of right versus wrong. All things considered, I think I turned out okay, and as a result I decided early on to share my love of comic book stories with my son. I thought I’d share some of the things that I’ve observed in regards to raising a child with comic books.

First – some kid appropriate superhero stuff:

Anything Lego Superheroes – awesome! Phonics books, movies, graphic novels, step books, and actual Lego kits, video games…

Batman and Superman Phonics books – good for after you’ve gone through a slightly more basic phonics program

Justice League animated series (Batman and Superman as well) – these are some amazing comic book stories appropriate for ALL ages. These are some of the best superhero stories I’ve experienced AND they have the best animated version of the Legion in JLU. The Supergirl/Brainiac 5 romance alone is worth it.

What should have been the LSH animated characters...

Legion of Superheroes Animated Series – I dislike this series. They took my favorite character (Brainiac 5) and made him a lame robot. Ugh. I just couldn’t watch it. However, my husband showed our son the series and they enjoyed it. I actually love the idea of kid appropriate LSH material, but there is not a lot out there that isn’t older material. I expect my son will read my Archives one day, but we are going to finish reading A Wrinkle in Time first. As a side note the Legion does show up in the animated shows and the Lego material here and there – we do have a cool Cosmic Boy minifigure!

DC Superhero Girls (I both like this idea and am annoyed by it, I wish the boys in the show were less lame. I’d like my son to see everyone working together equally)

The new JL movie – my son loved this. As a bonus they were fighting parademons, pretty straight up bad guys. I’ve never let him watch Dawn of Justice because I didn’t want to explain why two good guys were beating the crap out of each other (same for Civil War).

Superhero novels (mostly Step into reading books) – these bore me to tears, but my son likes them

Batmobiles and assorted superhero cars – these never get old and my son acts out pretty elaborate dramas. He actually mimics the ethical dilemmas from his other stories sometimes.

There’s more out there, but that’s a decent starting list. Here’s some of what I’ve actually tried to teach him using superheroes and comic books:

It's always okay to punch Lex Luthor in the face kids!

Teaching Right from Wrong

This has been a difficult area to work with in regards to my son only being 5. He understands the basics of good versus bad behavior but a lot of the more complex dilemmas are hard for him to grapple with at the moment. I’ve found that I run into some gray areas with stuff like Batman. We’ve had to talk about the differences between when it’s okay to fight and when it is not. We, like many other parents, started off with the blanket rule that hitting is bad. However, obviously, Batman and a majority of the other heroes hit. So, then you have to explain that they are hitting bad guys but that doesn’t really work that well. Eventually we explained that they are hitting bad guys to protect other people. The rule had been that hitting is bad unless you are protecting yourself or other people – and that we should ALWAYS try to get help first.

The one thing I found to be extremely helpful was using a lot of the Lego superhero material. Since it is geared towards kids (mostly) the messages are a bit clearer for a younger age group. Flash has to learn how to slow down and make a plan, Batman has to learn how to work well with others, the first rule of being a ninja (Ninjago) is a ninja never quits… good, easy to understand lessons for kids.

Beyond the Lego material it’s surprisingly difficult to find kid appropriate comic book material these days. The more adult-oriented material has a lot of mixed messages that are harder for a 5-year-old to understand. The older JLA and JLU animated series is great, but some of the newer animated series can get a bit dark. As far as actual comic books it’s nearly impossible to find anything that works. There’s Mouse Guard, Tellos, and other non-superhero stuff but as far as mainstream comics they all cater to adults only it seems. Which leads me to teaching reading using comic books – and also back to Lego again.

Teaching Reading with Comic Books

Given the sparseness of kid appropriate (and non-crappy) superhero comics I had to find an alternative. Luckily Lego Ninjago comes in graphic novel form! I started picking these up for my son and he fell in love with them. The reason I use these rather than a multitude of other kid appropriate graphic novels is because my son already recognizes the characters. He enjoyed Tellos, but he couldn’t figure the stories out on his own as well. The Ninjago graphic novels are side stories based off of the TV series (except the Dark Island Trilogy, which is a stand-alone storyline). My son can interpret most of the story from the pictures and it has motivated him to learn how to read. I didn’t realize how much this had improved his skills until we started a 100-day reading program.

We have been using the Distar 100-day reading program and are currently on day 46. Part of the program includes picture comprehension that is based on the readings. My son caught on to this part of the program faster than I expected, and I realized it was due to reading graphic novels. He had gotten used to merging picture and word comprehension.

We’ve also been using Superhero phonics books to supplement the program and give him more practice. The Batman phonics books are decent, although a little advanced for a starting reader (they’ll be fine once he’s finished the reading program). The Lego DC phonics books are just about perfect for his level, and I plan of getting the Superman phonics books somewhere down the line.

Again, he is more motivated to read when he recognizes the characters, he is able to use the pictures as context when he’s struggling to read a word, and he has picked up some of the more advanced words just because they are used fairly frequently in line with comic book lingo.

Teaching Emotions with Comic Books

This is a surprisingly easy area to build on, if nothing else to teach someone how not to handle their emotional issues. Due to the nature of superhero-ing the characters often struggle to deal with powerful emotions so when we read comic books I often ask my son to explain why someone is acting a certain way. He can tell me that Batman is sad and misses his parents, and he can tell me that Wonder Woman doesn’t like to see people get hurt so she wants to help them. It’s been a pretty good tool for early explorations of human emotion and reactions to emotional states.

And lastly, Discipline with Comic Books

Bad guys go to Arkham Asylum. Knowing this is usually enough to convince my son he doesn’t want to misbehave, haha. If things get really bad we can always introduce the Phantom Zone!

Your kids won't enjoy this time out location!

If you've made it this far, thanks!


I will now shameless plug my archaeological research in Pompeii - please share, and (if you can) donate :) Archaeologists help prevent powerful artifacts from falling into the hands of evildoers, support Archaeology!


gofundme.com/archaeology-fieldwork-pompeii


Oh, and just in case you were wondering, here is Cosmic Boy with Lego Gwen (archaeologist) and Lego Jen (chemist) exploring the Ninjago lighthouse. Because it's awesome.

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