52. Diver Down by Donald Lemke

Diver Down by Donald Lemke. illustrated by Yonami  (US) - (Canada)
Good vs Evil

Pages: 39
Ages: 10+
Finished: Feb. 13, 2012
First Published: Aug. 1, 2011
Publisher: Stone Arch Books
Genre: children, graphic novel, easy reader, adventure, modern pirates
Rating: 4/5



First sentence:  "What do you see?"

Publisher's Summary: "On a cloudless day, an American dive boat searches the Pacific Ocean for the remains of a sunken submarine and its mysterious cargo. However, they're not the only ones! When the SCUBA diver heads underwater, his loyal crewmate spots the flag of a threatening ship on the horizon. It's another dive team, and they'll stop at nothing capture the cargo and keep the sunken sub a secret."

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 lengthwise, 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 and we ended up with a chilling little ending reminiscent of "The Twilight Zone". 

Ds really enjoyed this one and we had to go back and follow the good guy throughout the sequence as the only way to recognize the two once they had suited up was from an emblem on their dive suits, one blue (good guy) one red (bad guy). 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.  If new titles are added I hope they will be a bit more textual, as these first four tended towards a lot of wordless/sound effects panels and we'd like more dialogue to carry the story. Otherwise, yes please ... give us more "Good vs Evil!