Early Book Review: The Glorkian Warrior Delivers a Pizza by James Kochalka

The Glorkian Warrior Delivers a Pizza by James Kochalka is a children's graphic novel scheduled for release on March 25th 2014. The Glorkian Warrior is not what anyone would call smart. So, it is a good thing he has a rechargeable, talking backpack to advise him as they set out on a perilous journey to deliver a pizza and met their destiny. The pizza has an odd assortment of toppings rather than the requested pepperoni, but they will deliver the pizza anyway.  As the warrior and his more practical backpack go about their mission they encounter challenges and gain some new companions along the way. The artwork is bright and everything is silly with classic pratfalls, some gross-out humor, and ridiculously bad decisions.

The Glorkian Warrior Delivers a Pizza is full of silly, goofy humor. The main character, the warrior, is the most unintelligent character that I have ever seen. Honestly, I know that it is part of the humor, and a relatively common tool, but this goes a bit to the extreme. It is not my kind of humor, but I can see young readers enjoying the silly aspect to his bumbling actions. My only worry is that continuing to feed our kids a diet of less than intelligent heroes we might teach them that smarts (common sense included) are not all that important. The artwork was a perfect match to the story. It was fun, colorful, and told most of the story.

The Glorkian Warrior Delivers a Pizza is a goofy read that will be appealing to many young readers. I think that reluctant readers, and those that say that reading is boring might be amused and introduced to the idea of comics as reading. Even though this book was not for me or my kids, I think it definitely has a place in getting some young readers more interested in reading.