I was looking forward to this, as I imagined it would be, but what I actually got was disappointing.

The art is pretty basic, with lots of close-ups on the same image (which made me think of those memes where you zoom in on a photo until it's blurry), even though there's nothing new to see. Lots of sparse backgrounds and heavily drawn characters, with the text kept separate from the art.

While Kupperman's quest to understand his father and his history are admirable, and complicated by the fact that his father seems to have blacked out everything related to Quiz Kids and then developed dementia, there's not much substance in this novel. What little he does uncover is nothing that couldn't be discovered by a stranger.

What it's really about, of course, is Michael's relationship with his father. There's an incredibly effective and emotional scene where he asks his father why he didn't try to be more involved in his life, and his father says he simply didn't think to try.

A lot of memoirs fall into this trap, I think: a very personal story, with a lot of meaning for the author, that leaves everyone else a little cold. ( )

I vacillated between 3 and 4 stars for this one. I wish I could give it 3 for the story and 4 for the layout, flow and graphics. I decided to place more weight on the graphics since, after all, this is a graphic novel. My goal is to read every nonviolent nonchildren's graphic novel at my local library this year. This is not a tall order as it is a small library. This book was about a child of a child star who resented his father and decided to write a book about him. In his research, he discovered that his dad was, gasp, human! Near the end of the book he said maybe I shouldn't have written about him? Nah, I'm in too deep! The book is almost done! Let's finish this thing! Dad will get over it even though I can see how traumatized remembering the past made him. The End. ( )

I received this for free as part of GoodReads 'First Reads' in exchange for a review.

This is an interesting, although extremely easy and quick read. There's not as much to it as I think you're led to believe by the blurb and by the size of the book. Its a shame what became of Joel Kupperman, and not just the dementia, but how his life turned out DUE to the Quiz Kids. Sadly, this book doesn't really do the whole 'finding out everything we need to know before he loses everything to dementia' kind of thing that has been done before. And it doesn't fully encompass the tragicness of a brilliant mind like Joel's succumbing to a mind-destroying disease like dementia.

I think if this wasn't done as a comic book style memoir, it wouldn't work. Because there just simply isn't enough there to go on. The book is hardback and 219 pages (give or take intro/acknowledgments). Each page is typically 3 panels with 1-3 sentences per panel and MAYBE some words in the panel. There is also chapter breaks with a whole page being the Chapter # and then the next page being a graphic with a quote from culture. So all in all there is probably 200 some pages of 10-15 sentences per page (max). Which is not a whole lot of reading (literally took me less than an hour to read this, all told). I'm sure if turned into a regular styled memoir it could be padded and added to, but even still it would come in very light, both in depth and in actual wordage.

Still an interesting and thoughtful read and the fact that it was done graphic novel style was an interesting (and fresh to me) take on a memoir. Sadly it was just lacking in depth and themes and a lot of the nuance of a typical memoir (in my opinion). ( )

The author gives a fascinating look into the life of his father, a child prodigy on a quiz show in the '40s and '50s, who spent a lifetime traumatized by the experience and now faces memory loss and dementia in his old age. As someone who values intellect highly, I was engrossed by this sad tale of one man's (boy's?) rise and fall and how it effected his relationship with his family for decades afterward. Highly recommended. ( )