My review of "Who is Stan Lee?" by Kira Maillaro

WHO IS STAN LEE?

Written by Geoff Edgers
Illustrated by John Hinderliter
Published by: Grosset & Dunlap (2014)
Cover price: $4.99

Mike: This review is co-written by my eight-year old daughter, Kira.  She's expressed some interest in what I do here at Critical Blast, so I decided to have her help me write a review  You might call it nepotism; I call it child labor.  I always wanted my own unpaid intern.  And this is deinitely better than those videos of kids reviewing candy on You Tube.   

Kira: This book is part of the "Who is?" series.  Other titles in this series include WHO IS WALT DISNEY? and WHO IS JANE GOODALL?

Mike: The "Who is?" books are biographies written for younger readers.  My daughter loves non-fiction books, and this series is perfect for her.

So, why did you pick this book to review, Kira?

Kira: Well, I got some help from Mrs. Ballard, my reading teacher.  She likes to encourage us to read nonfiction books.

Mike: But, why did you pick this particular non-fiction book?

Kira: Because Stan Lee made superhero comic books.  That got me interested in reading this book.

Mike: What did you think of the book?

Kira: I think that Stan Lee had a very good life. He made the Fantastic Four, Spider-Man, X-Men, and Ant-Man.  Ant-Man even has a movie that it in the theaters right now! 

Mike: Was this book easy for you to understand?

Kira: This book was a little hard.  There were some words that I didn't know.  But I understood most of it.

Mike: Did anything in this book make you sad?

Kira: Yes.  Jan, their second daughter, died a few days after she was born.  That made me sad. 

Mike: What did you think of the illustrations?

Kira: I thought the pictures were really cute.  I enjoyed looking at them.

Mike: Would you recommend this book to other readers?

Kira: Yes.  Because I think they would really like it.  And you can learn a lot about Stan Lee.

Mike: What score would you give this book out of 5?

Kira: 5/5

Mike: From the adult perspective, I do think the "Who is?" series is a great way to introduce young readers to non-fiction.  Stan Lee's story is pretty well told, and of course, it's a subject area that I think a lot of kids might be interested in.  Especially since Stan Lee actually appears in so many superhero movies.  Although for me, his finest moment is probably the end of BIG HERO 6:

On a technical level, I did have one complaint about this book.  While the font on the main book is fine, in a few places, the book did quick features on different elements, such as "How comics are made?"  On those pages, the font they used has really bad spacing and the words often run right together.  It made it those pages a little hard to read.`      

I hope you guys enjoyed this review.  Let me know if we should keep the kid around helping out, or should we fire her? 

(She is yelling at me now to erase that part.  I think I liked it better when she didn't read so well).