Erghh, I should learn how to take criticism better. Some other cartoonists said that I needed to take time off and improve the site, which I've been trying to do.

I'll get at least one comic up this week, featuring B.B. and Juggles.

In the meantime, I rescued an opossum from drowning this morning in a swimming pool. I took a net with a long pole and fished it out. It clung to the net even when I set it on the grass, and would not move. I went for a walk with my mother, came back, and found the possum cleaning itself like a prissy cat.

No comment, except that photos will soon follow.

. . . to post up the introduction strips. I would've have Monday's done, but a chocolate festival over the weekend intervened.

Don't worry, at least two people will be featured this week.

All the comics are in a standard format now and in a standard size, so that they are easy to read. I'll try to get a short comic up today and Friday, as well as have the introduction strips ready.

Juggles will be introducing all of the characters and the bakery to Schulz, so you will soon know who everyone is.

Also, starting next week, Wednesdays will feature Mallory's diary and Fridays will feature the culinary book of the week.

Today's comic will probably be up tomorrow because a lot of readers have mentioned wanting a strip introducing all of the important characters. If nothing is up by Thursday, come back Monday for a full update. Rest assured, you will soon know who everyone is.

I'm kind of cheating this week, because Honey and Clover is a manga series, not just one book. But I love manga and this series has too much heart, food, and honesty to pass up on a technicality.

Honey and Clover takes place at an art school in Japan, concerning a group of students and a professor who live together. Morita, the lazy moneymaking genius, likes to annoy everyone with his luck and wild ways. Hagu, the kid of the group, cries easily when told of horrible things. Takemoto, who likes Hagu and tries to take care of her, has to deal with Morita's craziness and his own problems at art school. These and other crazy characters enliven the series.

Throughout the book, Takemoto and his roommates when not working or bickering end up craving meat. Apparently being in college also means being vegetarian; one chapter humorously describes how the entire dorm moans after a student who brings back sacks of beef has to leave for a family emergency.

Honey and Clover is also fun to read because of the zany characters and the heart in it. Chika Umino knows when to be comical, sad, or even honest. (Parents may want to screen it before giving it to their children, however.) Her writing would put the Spiderman soap opera to shame. For that, if nothing else, please look into this series.

It's funny how everyone tells you to wash your hands, because it makes sense yet it hasn't been ingrained into our system, even with the swine flu scare this year. My mom and I even bicker about how I dont' wash my hands right, even when I do.

In restaurants (and bakeries), cleanliness is twice as important because the cooks use their hands to stir and mix food. In one of my Richard Scarry computer games as a kid the baker had to take a shower before kneading dough to make bread. If you forgot to have him shower, you had to make the dough over again. Thus, Schulz cannot enter the bakery kitchen without taking a shower.



The bakery was my favorite part of the game except for garbage pick-up, but in garbage pick-up you got to put out fires and rescue chimney sweeps. Even baking can't compete with that, at least on the computer screen.

Moral of the story? Keep your hands clean. And if you plan to work for Lamode, make sure to shower to avoid the suds tidal wave.

Maurice Sendak made a reputation for himself with the book Where the Wild Things Are. I’ve read the book and believed that Sendak was a one-hit wonder. But, while looking at Dr. Seuss books, I happened to come across this story.

Night Kitchen is an endearing surreal tale that could be anyone’s dream. Mickey encounters the night kitchen after the cooks wake him up and nearly bake him into their cake for the morning. To top it off, Mickey’s clothes fall off, leaving him drenched in brown cake batter that resembles bear fur, which recalls Wild Things. (But he is nude for several parts of the story, so you are warned.)

This book’s a no-brainer culinary book, but it’s also a story that I wish that I had read as a child. I watched too much television when I was young, only getting into reading when I discovered elementary school novels and could no longer see daily cartoons on the screen.

The pages vibrate with imagination, vivid entertaining images, and a story that makes sense within the realm of fantasy. Sendak takes a familiar image—the kitchen—and turns it into a realm where anything and everything must happen to maintain the daily morning cake.

In addition, it’s an honest foray into the night, which for me is still filled with scary unseen grim reapers under the bed. I can read the story as a young adult without feeling like an idiot. Sendak doesn’t talk down to his reader; he has a fundamental honesty that you need to write children’s stories, in contrast to Dr. Seuss’s universal wit.

The Butter Battle Book has been under fire for its commentary on nuclear war, on how atomic bombs lead to either a stalemate or total annihilation of the human race. However, for an allegedly propaganda book promoting peace, it spurts enough humor to jolt rocks out of bed, even when discussing victory and defeat. I found out about it when coordinating Banned Books Week at my school in 2008, but only discovered it in my local library last week. If I had known how much a picture book could be, then I would’ve checked it out a long time ago.

Butter concerns two types of civilians: Yooks and Zooks. The Yooks eat their bread with butter side up while the Zooks eat butter side down. Because of this, there’s a great wall between the two groups that becomes the center of a battlefield, where the Zooks stave off the Yooks with every crazy weapon they can come up with.

Dr. Seuss eases what would otherwise develop into pessimistic poetry, however, by describing the plight of the Yooks as the Zooks outmatch them. The ridiculous weapons pale in comparison to nuclear missiles; we have cocker spaniels named Daniel firing orange Kick-a-poo Kids, elephants toting blue boom-blitzes, and pep groupies called the Right-Side-Up Song Girls. How can you not have fun reading the rhymes aloud?

This is the culinary context book of the week because today’s strip concerns the Butter Battle Book, and because the whole conflict in the book starts over a disagreement on how to butter bread. Everyone has had this sort of problem on how to eat or prepare food, especially within families and across international borders. At home I’m constantly chastised for eating while I’m walking, which is a messy habit, but it’s never ruined my dinner.

The Yooks have a point, though, because eating bread with the butter side down is messy, but at the same time such a little issue should never lead to a big blowout. That makes the book all the more entertaining as we watch the Yooks muddle through warfare.

Someone should just go in and ask them all to switch to olive oil for dipping. It’s healthier and has less saturated fat, and can’t be buttered onto bread.