Big Nate - Payback Time!
2014
- children's fiction
- humorous stories
- short stories
- cartoons and comics
The story
Look out, Big Nate fans—it’s payback time! In this brand-new collection of Big Nate comics, Nate develops a mysterious allergy to Mrs. Godfrey, wages epic snowball fights with Teddy and Francis, and even takes a nervous newbie under his wing during detention. But after a disastrous run-in with Randy in the cafetorium, our hero faces a dreaded after-school showdown on the soccer field. Will Nate survive or get kicked around? From wedgies and food fights to Halloween pranks and sixth-grade crushes, Big Nate: Payback Time! has got it all.
What it’s like
Bright, loose, hand-lettered panels with thick black linework and plenty of white space, the kind of cartoon page you can flip through in a single sitting. Each strip is a quick, self-contained gag built on classroom life: doodled margins, speech bubbles crowding the frame, a scruffy sixth-grader's face going from smug to stricken in three boxes. The humour is breezy and physical rather than dark, with wedgies, snowball ambushes, cafeteria chaos and a Halloween prank or two, and nothing grim lingers past the last panel. Violence is cartoon-slapstick only, mild and gently mocked. Romance is limited to awkward sixth-grade crushes handled with a wink. Reading it feels like a light, cheerful sprint, best for a lazy afternoon, a short commute, or a comfort-read with a kid who likes goofy, self-deprecating heroes. It suits young readers around nine to twelve, reluctant readers who respond to comics, and adults who want something warm and silly with no sting in it.
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