GON by Masashi Tanak Date of Publication: 1992 ISBN:978-1-4012-1273-5 Number of pages: 150

REQUIRED READING ABILITY: Junior: Low
GENRES: Adventure
THEMES: Survival, Isolation

SUMMARY: Masashi Tanaka is a Japanese artist who set himself a challenge to tell a story without words. He has done this with GON, which is volume one of an entirely silent series. Gon is a small, super powerful, dinosaur like creature who has mysteriously found himself in the post-dinosaur, pre-mankind era. Gon's world is a naturalistic but violent place where survival of the fittest is continuously practiced. The novel is divided into four episodes that show Gon's adventures of survival with the many dangerous animals in his world.

WHO WOULD LOVE THIS BOOK? A kid who...
- enjoys animals
- has a good imagination and can create the story in his/her mind while looking through the illustrations
- enjoys adventures

WHAT ELSE? DC comics first introduced this tiny dinosaur in the 1990's. It seems like an ideal time to reintroduce GON because readers are now experienced with Japanese Manga (pages reading from right to left). The graphics are in black and white and contain some violent scenes. There is no text, only illustrations.