45. Dungeon of Seven Dooms by Michael Dahl

Dungeon of Seven Dooms by Michael Dahl. illustrated by Roberta Pares (US) - (Canada)
Good vs Evil

Pages: 39
Ages: 8+
Finished: Feb. 8, 2012
First Published: Aug. 1, 2011
Publisher: Stone Arch Books
Genre: children, graphic novel, easy reader, fantasy
Rating: 3/5

First sentence:  In an ancient kingdom of light and shadow, on the night of the Dragon's Star, Prince Kalban imprisons his twin brother, the rightful heir to the throne.


Publisher's Summary:  "Young Prince Arel has been imprisoned by his evil brother, Prince Kalban, who seeks to steal the throne. Arel must use his wits and his sword arm to battle through the monstrous traps of the Dungeon of the Seven Dooms in order to rescue his father and save the kingdom."

Acquired: Purchased a new copy from an online retailer at my son's request.  It is extremely rare that he asks for a book, so when he asked for the other two books in this series I purchased them for him.

Reason for Reading:   Next in the series.

This easy-to-read series with a high interest level (written at RL 1.3, GRL: M for ages 8-12) brings a very unique interactive approach to graphic novels which I would honestly love to see more of in the future.  The pages are split in half horizontally, with one half being the good side of the story and the other the same story from the evil point of view.  The stories do interact with each other and there are several ways to read the book.  Read just the good side, read just the evil side, then read both sides consecutively to get the whole story at once.  My ds loves this approach!  He always must read the good side first and in this story I think that hindered us a bit, as we were left with a rather confusing little story, that ended rather strangely.  Then reading the evil side certainly added a lot more information to the story we had been missing but I must say we still ended up with a strange story which neither of us is sure whether it crossed over into an alternate dimension.  However ds enjoyed reading it and is looking forward to the last book.  He is hoping Stone Arch will be adding more books to the series this year, but so far there is no sign of new titles.