Reviews for The Essential Calvin And Hobbes (Turtleback School & Library Binding Edition)

The average rating for The Essential Calvin And Hobbes (Turtleback School & Library Binding Edition) based on 2 reviews is 4.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2011-07-30 00:00:00 Mark Craft August 7, 2011 Dear Bill, Your decade long run of Calvin and Hobbes was the greatest run of any comic strip in the history of comic strips, and you made the right choice putting an end to it when you did. I can't believe it's been gone for 16 years now. Your precocious Calvin was what every kid with an overactive imagination is in their own heads, but you also gave us the view of what the rest of the world sees in these kids and does to try and beat the imagination out of them. There's implied sadness in the explicit joy you gave us, and it makes Calvin and Hobbes a true masterpiece. I was fourteen when you started your opus, and I was close enough to my own hyper-imaginative childhood to connect at a visceral level. My youthful imaginary friends were still fresh in my mind, and my current imaginary friends were just taking hold, and your strip gave me something to relate to, someone to cheer for, a place where it was okay to turn dreary realties of the world into exciting fantasies and be proud of that ability all at the same time. It was also a fabulous way to relax my brain (though not too much) amidst all the literature I was devouring at a frightening rate. But I have a request. Now that I am forty, and I have a precocious little Calvin of my own making explosive sounds with his mouth as he blows up his LEGO creations (as I write this, in fact), and my little Calvin's twin sister, who happens to be a lot like Susie, I would love it if you came out of retirement and gave us just one year of Calvin and Hobbes and Son (or Daughter). I want to see where Calvin is now. I want to see Calvin as a Dad, and I want his son (or daughter) with a beaten up, super ratty, devilish-as-ever Hobbes. But I don't want this comic to be about the kids, I want it to be about Calvin. I want to see how well Calvin was able to fight off his indoctrination; I imagine he's one of those rare folks who didn't join the mainstream, who somehow continued to live on his own terms, but my imagination aside, I am dying to see what he became for you. Please, please, please come back, Bill. We could all use a bit of Calvin again. I know that my request will never reach you, and that, if it did, you'd probably never even consider the possibility, but I know you could do the "parenting thing" better than all your peers, just as you did the "kid thing" better than anyone else. So I'll just leave you with the firmest, most heartfelt thank you that I have in me: thank you for that little corner of joy you carved into my world. I'll never forget it, and late at night, when I am dipping my peanut butter and jelly into my hot chocolate, I'll have one of my Calvin and Hobbes books open so that I can stain the pages with the purple of some yummy Welch's grape jelly. Just as Calvin would. Sincerely, Brad Simkulet

Review # 2 was written on 2009-12-25 00:00:00 Jamie Clouthier My dad gave me this book Christmas 2009, and I prior to reading it last week, I had not experienced Calvin and Hobbes. Well, that isn't completely true. I had read one or two strips, I suppose. Seen other people reading it. But I hadn't experienced it. I had not sat down with a thick, luscious book full of Calvin and Hobbes strips, full of wonderful, pinpoint and intelligent humour. When I did finally sit down, I fell in love. So to all my friends out there: how dare you not kidnap me and force-feed me Calvin and Hobbes? For shame! I fell in love with the way Bill Watterson portrays the truth and beauty of the universe through the cheeky eyes of a young boy. Children, lacking the filters that most adults come to acquire, often say the darnednest things, and Calvin says a lot that falls into that category. Calvin refuses to eat something on his plate, observing wryly that "you know you won't like it when they won't tell you what it is." Calvin, ever street-smart, sneaks out of bed late at night, then phones his house from a pay phone (remember those?) to say, "Hello, Dad! It is now three in the morning. Do you know where I am?" Precocious, clever, and self-aware, Calvin embodies that spark, dare I say that joie de vivre, that we all seek to retain from childhood. I speak with the perspective of a 21-year-old who never wanted to grow up, but in spite of my best efforts, managed to do it anyway. Maturity sneaked up on me, stalked me, and played a game of cat-and-mouse through my adolescent years. Eventually, fortunately or unfortunately, it won. Which is not to say that I have entirely abandoned my childhood glee, my sense of wonder'I do, after all, read science fiction; in November I got involved in an awesome snowball fight with my coworkers. And I know now what I did not know as a child: it is tough to keep your child-like enthusiasm when the world expects you, requires you to be an adult. So I think a child, an adolescent, or an older adult are all going to get something different from Calvin and Hobbes than I will. We all might find the strips funny, but our core enjoyment is going to come from an identification that is different for each of us. Calvin and Hobbes has a broad appeal, but it is not the same appeal to everyone. For me, it is a nostalgic retrospective on the days I have left behind. Not that I was ever a trouble-maker like Calvin, oh no. I did not launch wagons into lakes or trees. I was not a terror of babysitters, and as far as I know, I never flooded the bathroom while struggling against a shark in the bathtub. Nevertheless, there is something universal to the childhood experience about Calvin's exuberance. And now here I am, in my third decade, trying to reconnect with that aspect of my life. The brilliance of these comic strips go deeper than just nostalgia. There is something profound about Calvin and Hobbes. At the same time that these two are cooking up a scheme straight out of'well, the comic books'and we are laughing right along with them, suddenly Hobbes will spring a Big Question on us: Calvin: do you believe in Fate? Hobbes: You mean, that our lives are predestined? Calvin: Yeah ... that the things we do are inevitable. Hobbes: What a scary thought. Hobbes says this last part as the wagon they are in goes careening off a dock into a lake, possibly as part of a crazy Calvin venture to jump across the lake in their wagon. There is just such a broad range of humour and tone to these strips. Watterson takes us from the fantastical Spaceman Spiff sketches to the hilarious and intelligent insults Calvin hurls at his crush, Susie: "I hope you suffer a debilitating brain aneurysm, you freak!" (Which, if an adult uttered this, would be horrible; and in the real world, let's face it, a child might get soap mouthwash. But for me reading Calvin, it's just adorable.) And from these strips, Watterson takes us even further, to ponder those Big Questions of the universe'fun, yes, and funny, but those strips tend to end with a question mark hovering above them. Reading Calvin and Hobbes also affirms my opinion that comics are a sublime form of literature, and those snobs who look down their noses at this form as somehow "childish" or "immature" are poopyheads. Maybe you don't like Calvin and Hobbes'or perhaps, like me, you've merely never experienced it. Still, Calvin and Hobbes demonstrates the power of the comic form, that essential marriage of witty wordplay with evocative pictures, to convey both humourous and serious subjects. This is a medium that can tell amazing stories, stories both vast and magnificent in scope yet intimate and human in significance. From superheroes to supervillains to ordinary, everday kids, comic strips are awesome. They connect us to our imagination in a way few literary forms can manage. Don't get me wrong; I love novels with a white-hot passion. But there is something just so basic'and I think it is this primal element that snobs confuse with immaturity'to the comic form that makes it so versatile and powerful.