{"id":8313,"date":"2010-04-22T12:15:58","date_gmt":"2010-04-22T17:15:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/opticalsloth.com\/?p=8313"},"modified":"2010-03-24T13:24:41","modified_gmt":"2010-03-24T18:24:41","slug":"bennett-marek-breakfast-at-mimis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/opticalsloth.com\/?p=8313","title":{"rendered":"Bennett, Marek – Breakfast at Mimi’s"},"content":{"rendered":"

Website<\/a><\/p>\n

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Breakfast at Mimi’s<\/strong><\/p>\n

I finally got around to reading this big collection of the Mimi strips, so the question can be answered: it to too cute to be any good in one huge chunk?\u00c2\u00a0 It turns out that my question is stupid, because this, while being occasionally adorable, couldn’t rightly be defined as “cute”.\u00c2\u00a0 That probably makes no sense at all, so let me explain.\u00c2\u00a0 This book is, essentially, a collection of the life of a family over a 4 year period.\u00c2\u00a0 Things start off with Shayna (the oldest daughter of the family, and no, “Mimi” is never explained) in 8th grade and it ends shortly after her 16th birthday.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s mostly a collection of full page Sunday strips, but there are still plenty of the three panel strips thrown in.\u00c2\u00a0 Still not a fan of that format, but the strangest thing happens when they’re all lumped together on one page: they form a seamless story.\u00c2\u00a0 If I had one complaint about this book, it’s that Marek should maybe number the strips (he does refer back to older strips at times, and while I knew what he was talking about because I just read the whole book, it would be tougher for people reading this via newspaper\/mini comics).\u00c2\u00a0 At its heart this book is (and I never thought I would say this about anything) uplifting.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s the story of a family broken up by divorce, remarried with the birth father almost completely absent and a whole new set of relatives, all while dealing with the normal events of a childhood.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s not all fun and games either, there’s child abuse and stealing in here, but they’re dealt with in a mature way that isn’t overly moralistic.\u00c2\u00a0 I was completely blown away, if all this rambling isn’t enough of a clue of that fact.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s easy enough for us cynics to dismiss this with a glance.\u00c2\u00a0 Hey, if it’s in any Sunday newspapers it must not be that funny.\u00c2\u00a0 I was very wrong on that one.\u00c2\u00a0 Subjects in this vast tome include the opening and running of a doughnut shop (told mostly from the perspective of someone who hates doughnuts), a stepsister moving in with a fairly hostile sister, building a city for ungrateful cats, kids spiking the punch in their own unique way, trying to get fortunes into sealed fortune cookies, dealing with bullies, building a perpetual motion machine, vampire mosquitoes, 8th grade prom night, and going to a high school party.\u00c2\u00a0 That’s only the first section of 4, and only a small sample section of that.\u00c2\u00a0 There are plenty of samples at the website if you need convincing, but if this can win over an old curmudgeon like me it can win over anybody.\u00c2\u00a0 And it’s only a measly $12!<\/p>\n

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Website Breakfast at Mimi’s I finally got around to reading this big collection of the Mimi strips, so the question can be answered: it to too cute to be any good in one huge chunk?\u00c2\u00a0 It turns out that my question is stupid, because this, while being occasionally adorable, couldn’t rightly be defined as “cute”.\u00c2\u00a0 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[635,2510],"class_list":["post-8313","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","tag-breakfast-at-mimis","tag-marek-bennett"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/opticalsloth.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8313","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/opticalsloth.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/opticalsloth.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/opticalsloth.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/opticalsloth.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8313"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/opticalsloth.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8313\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8319,"href":"https:\/\/opticalsloth.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8313\/revisions\/8319"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/opticalsloth.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8313"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/opticalsloth.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8313"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/opticalsloth.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8313"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}