Sketch Monsters, Book 1: Escape of the Scribbles
Written by Joshua Williamson
Art by Vicente “Vinny” Navarrete
Book Design by Keith Wood
Oni Press
Release date: October 26, 2011
Cover Price: $12.99

Eight-year-old Mandy isn’t a big fan of expressing her feelings and emotions. Instead, she prefers to draw her emotions as monsters in her sketchbook. One day, the monsters escape from her sketchbook and the only help she has to catch them is a monster named Happster.

Sketch Monsters: Escape of the Scribbles was a very enjoyable all-ages book. The theme of the book deals with expressing your emotions instead of keeping them bottled up inside. This theme is a good one to teach children and expresses a good life lesson. The book deals with an 8-year old-girl who doesn’t express her emotions well and essentially shuts her feelings off. Her only release is drawing her emotions as different monsters. I had a lot of fun reading this particular book. It’s a good read for children as well as adults.

The story by Joshua Williamson had a lot of great life lessons that children should know as well as adults. The art by Vicente “Vinny” Navarrete was very beautiful to look at. Navarrete keeps his art style in a very familiar children’s art palette while bringing bright colors to the page which can be something very easy and gorgeous to look at.

Overall, Sketch Monsters: Escape of the Scribbles was a fun and thoroughly enjoyable read. It definitely fills the void of the limited all-ages comics that are on the market today. If you want a fun read for yourself or for that special child in your life, I highly recommend purchasing Sketch Monsters: Escape of the Scribbles.