Stinky is a monster who lives in a swamp outside of town. He loves everything that smells stinky, from pickled onions to his pet toad Wartbelly. One thing that Stinky does not love is kids! Kids like to take baths and eat apples. They don’t like mucky mud or slimy monsters. One day, he is horrified to find a kid, Nick, has built a house in one of his trees! He devises several plans to scare Nick out of his woods. He leaves smelly Wartbelly in the kid’s tree house, but Nick takes the toad in as his own pet. Next, Stinky hides Nick’s hammer in the muckiest, smelliest, part of the swamp. Nick has no fear when he travels to the smelliest part of the swamp to retrieve it. Then, Stinky covers himself in a sheet and attempts to scare Nick, but his sheet get snagged and he reveals himself in front of the boy before running back into the woods. Later, Stinky finds Nick’s hat and kicks it into the Bottomless Pit. A few days later, Nick posts “Lost” signs all over town for his lucky hat that Stinky found. Stinky, feeling guilty, tries to retrieve the hat but falls into the not-so-bottomless pit. Nick hears Stinky’s cries and rescues him. Stinky confesses to everything, saying that he did all of those things because he thought that kids hated stinky, smelly things. The story ends with the two becoming fast friends. Even Stinky has to admit that apples taste pretty good.
This is a great graphic novel to introduce to elementary-aged children. I read my first graphic novel in high school, and it was challenging for me because I had no idea how to read them. It took a while for me to understand which boxes to read first and how to differentiate between thoughts, dialogue, and flashbacks. I would use Stinky in my classroom as a tool for teaching students how to read graphic novels. I would teach them the basic components, and what makes them different from typical texts. I would also show them how to read a graphic novel. As a project, I could ask the students to make their own pages of a graphic novel, using the strategies and techniques that they have learned.
