The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl: Squirrel Meets World
WHO RUNS THE WORLD? SQUIRRELS! Fourteen-year-old Doreen Green moved from sunny California to the suburbs of New Jersey. She must start at a new school, make new friends, and continue to hide her tail. Yep, Doreen has the powers of . . . a squirrel! After failing at several attempts to find her new BFF, Doreen feels lonely and trapped, liked a caged animal. Then one day Doreen uses her extraordinary powers to stop a group of troublemakers from causing mischief in the neighborhood, and her whole life changes. Everyone at school is talking about it! Doreen contemplates becoming a full-fledged Super Hero. And thus, Squirrel Girl is born! She saves cats from trees, keeps the sidewalks clean, and dissuades vandalism. All is well until a real-life Super Villain steps out of the shadows and declares Squirrel Girl his archenemy. Can Doreen balance being a teenager and a Super Hero? Or will she go . . . NUTS?
Any true fan of the Marvel Comics Brand is going to love this book, both kids and adults alike. The Hales did a wonderful job of creating an extraordinarily humorous adaptation of the Squirrel Girl Comic with having captured the essence of what makes her so adorable.
The footnotes that are sporadically included along the pages are fun, educational and add an interesting layer to the plot as you get more information from Doreen’s point of view plus the reader will get a kick out of her ‘reading’ the story along with them. Along with the footnotes, the other extras the authors have provided give a taste of comic realism alongside their wonderfully detailed character development and well written plotline. It was amusing to learn more about Marvel characters we’re familiar with like Thor who apparently drives all the women wild with photos of him shirtless tearing through Twitter and those we haven’t had much contact with like She-Hulk who punches out robbers when she’s not stopping in to get smoothies.
The character development shown through the multiple points of view really helped give a full view of where the authors were taking the story and how everyone was involved. Chapters switch off between having the story told through the eyes of Squirrel Girl AKA Doreen Green, an actual squirrel, the evil villain AKA Micro Manager, Doreen’s friend Ana Sofia and chapters devoted to text message conversations. Having a main character who is hearing challenged was not only a great way to add diversity but it provided an avenue to show that you shouldn’t count out those who are different because they just might help save the world someday.
The chapters that were devoted to text conversations not only gave us a chance to see how Squirrel Girl interacts with other Super Heroes but it gave the reader a chance to see how well the Hales were able to capture the essence of those characters in the little bit of dialogue we got and they did a great job! We got to see her interact with Rocket & Groot from Guardians of the Galaxy, Black Widow, Stark, Winter Solider and even her beloved She-Hulk.
In order to thoroughly ground this book in the Marvel world we’ve all come to know and love, the Hales have added appearances by She-Hulk, Hydra, Thanos, Star-Lord, Loki, S.H.I.E.L.D, and Coulson, along with the Avengers.
What also made this book terrific, aside from the laughs a minute embedded alongside Marvel drop-ins, were the real world lesson such as the difficulties in moving to a new place where you don’t know anyone, trying to make friends, learn the social hierarchy and how to stay positive through it all.
The little dig at DC Comics in the chapter six footnotes was pretty decent, lol.
By the way, in a fight between She-Hulk and Daredevil, I’m Team Daredevil. No offense to my own gender but us Irish-Catholics have to stand together! :-)