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Belazar has joined your party!

Travis Daventhorpe for the Win! is actually a pretty incredible and fun graphic novel for middlegrade readers. I, admittedly, kind of started off this book thinking it was a little silly, what with the way we first began the book on a set of farmers who initially don’t seem to play much of a role in the story as a whole. But, as we get to know young Travis and slowly immerse ourselves into his world, a lot of the goofy events really begin to grow on you.

As I’ve noticed with a number of graphic novels for young readers recently, there’s a really adorable video-game, RPG-esque format to many events throughout the story. As each character is introduced, we get insight into their “stats” and random pop ups appear at various points in the story, such as a weapon being equipped or another character joining the questing party. This, while certainly cheesy, was just so much fun and I loved every second of it.

The farmers pop up from time to time, existing as the people who just live there but are still impacted by the events going on around them. They react very quickly to the changes around them in a fun and amusing way, meanwhile we’re privy to some of the more in-depth information related to our hero, Travis, his friends and teachers, and the villain set on destroying Travis so he can one day destroy the multi-verse.

This was an extremely fun read and one I certainly anticipate being added to my ever-growing list of book recommendations for students. I can’t wait to share it with the kiddos I know are going to have a blast reading this one!