Jon Chad, a Vermont cartoonist who works for the Center for Cartoon Studies, has created a cool comic book that explores geology in a unique way. Leo Geo and His Miraculous Journey Through the Center of the Earth is a long, narrow book, and on the first page Leo (the scientist) instructs you to turn the book sideways, making it a long vertical frame. Then, as you turn pages, Leo drills down into the earth, through the crust, then the mantle, and into the core … and then the book flips over as he climbs his way out the other side. It’s a really fun way to represent his journey in a format that helps picture the distance traveled, even if it’s not done to scale.
Sample page spread from Leo Geo.
As Leo travels down, he encounters a lot of crazy creatures and underground beings, some fantastical and some silly. But he also describes his journey and relates a lot of facts about geology and other sciences. And he’s really gung-ho about science, as he will tell everyone he meets along the way.
Leo himself is very simply illustrated, not much more than an outline with a face. But the landscapes he travels through and the creatures he finds are incredibly meticulous, with lots of details to pore over. There’s also a good deal of text, even though at first glance it seems like just a fanciful “center of the earth” sci-fi comic.
My five-year-old was immediately hooked: I think she really liked the book’s format, but she was equally fond of Leo’s science talk and the bizarre animals. Eventually she’ll come to realize that there’s a lot of actual truth mixed in with the fiction, but for now she just enjoys the story. And maybe that’s the point.
Leo Geo is a really creative way to learn a bit about geology, and gives a nice picture of the makeup of the Earth’s center. It’s also a really amusing book and fun to read, in an eye-catching format. There were a few typos and misspellings in the version I read; hopefully those will be corrected in a future edition.
The book will be released tomorrow, and is available for order now.
Disclosure: The publisher provided a review copy of this book.
