Book Review: Escape From Zoodletraz (Snoodles in Space)

Reviewed by Jaylynn Korrell

A fun-filled and wacky graphic novel for imaginative and silly kids

The snoodles are back! The zoodles are back! The wackadoodle team of Steven Joseph and Andy Case are back with another funny, intergalactidoodle adventure.

Escape from Zoodletraz is the third book in the Snoodles in Space series, which follows members of the Noodleham community on Earth and the inhabitants of other worlds, like the aliens on planet Zoodle. Characters like Frimpy Frumpy Froodle and Whimpy Whiny Woodle have already saved the Earth once, but Zoodlemania isn’t done yet.

Croodle the Grand Roodle, another recurring character from the series, has been noticing the buzzing music scene down in Noodleham, and he’s decided to become a music star on Earth himself. But it turns out, it’s not so easy becoming as popular as mega-superstar Swifty Swoodle.

After Croodle is booed off stage, he comes up with a plan for revenge—which includes kidnapping notable animals on Earth and placing them in Zoodletraz, a high-security prison on an island. This is the story of the inhabitants of Noodleham trying to help those animals escape and to make sure Croodle never does something like this again.

Author Steven Joseph comes with another flurry of fun with this hilarious read-aloud adventure. This guy could throw a doodle into anything, it seems. His imagination, coupled with the perfectly fitting illustrations of Andy Case, make this a goofy wonder of a read. If you’ve got silly, creative kids at home who have graduated from picture books into the world of single-story graphic novels, Escape from Zoodletraz is here to bridge that gap for you. It’s filled with silly and zany vocabulary to make reading aloud a jumbly-wumbly bubble of fun for both you and them. Even when your children start being able to read themselves, they’ll have fun peeking at the little jokes sprinkled here and there, like on the spines of books or in the headlines of a news story.

Did you know that Frimpy Frumpy and Whimpy Whiny “helped remove griddle from the Earth’s oceans, even the wet ones?”

In addition to the silly fun to be had on the page, Escape from Zoodletraz comes with an album. And it rocks? With different singers and styles on nearly every song of the 10-song album, the one constant is that it’s a blast to dance to. The production quality really stands out—these are fully developed noodle-doodle pop hits. The end of the book features a game, a maze, and a coloring page too.

The thing that stands in the book’s way is just the sheer amount of information and characters coming at us from so many directions. It’s a lot to keep track of quickly. Luckily, the illustrations bring characters to life so they become clearer in our minds, but it could still require some flipping back and forth to remember how each character is related to the story. Occasionally, the noodle-doodle language takes precedent over the plot, so some pages are more dedicated to funny-sounding backstory than the escape itself.

This series is growing along with the reader—from picture books to juvenile graphic novels—without ever losing hold of its wacky sense of humor. Joseph and Case make for one hilarious team.

Thank you for reading Jaylynn Korrell’s book review of Escape from Zoodletraz by Steven Joseph! If you liked what you read, please spend some more time with us at the links below.

The post Book Review: Escape From Zoodletraz (Snoodles in Space) appeared first on Independent Book Review.