I finished Bone - The complete collection about a week back. It is LoTR made easy and done well, so the cartoon book Worked for me.
Cast: Fone Bone, Phoney Bone, Smiley Bone, Grandma Rose, Lucius, Thorn, Rat creatures, A Rat cub - Bartleby, Kingdok - the leader of Rat creatures, A bug - Ted, Locusts, The lord of the locusts, Briar, Mim - The queen of dragons, Dragons, The Great Red Dragon, Rock Jaw - the formidable Lion...
Bone starts in a goofy sort of a way. You see funny looking Bone cousins turned out of Bonesville because Phoney Bone wanted to run for Mayor, but at the picnic he serves the public with rotten food, etc. By the time you reach book-3, you know that Jeff Smith means business.
The Bone cousins find their way across a deserted land and in course, encounter silly Rat Creatures (one of them obsessed with quiché, can you imagine!), and get separated during a locust attack. Ted, a talking bug helps Fone Bone find his way to a girl, who he thinks knows everything. This is Thorn and Fone Bone falls in love with her almost instantly.
Then there is Thorn’s Grandma Ben or Rose as Lucius, the owner of Barrel Haven fondly calls her. Grandma is obsessed with cow races and in undeniably the defending champion. She is also uncannily agile for someone her age.
The humour during the cow race sprouts when Phoney Bone tries to manipulate the villagers by getting them to bet on a mystery cow and get rich. Of course, his fate can not be altered by his ridiculous plans. Soon we realize that on the surface, everything is fine and dandy but Grandma Ben is hiding a lot from us and Thorn has a rather shady past that she catches glimpses of only in her dreams. One by one, the secrets are revealed.
The thin line dividing the real world and the dreams become narrower and narrower through the course of the book.
The bug Ted keeps popping here and there. His role is more of an informer, which also turns him into a saviour. Anyone in peril and needs to get a word across, voila, Ted is there mysteriously. There is also a red dragon who constantly rescues Fone bone out of sticky situations. All through the book the cousins and their friends separate and reunite many a times.
The Rat Creatures are reminiscent of Orcs and Kingdok (enhanced, more vicious, king of the rat creatures) is like the Uruk-hais (enhanced Orcs, I say) though there is just one of him. The great war is exactly like the war at the end of Return of the king.
Bows, arrows, ladders, swords, and all that. I think, Jeff Smith really, Really, REALLY wanted to pay a homage to Tolkien, and I liked it. To think he started it as a Kindergartner.
What the fate of these different characters meet with is determined after the great battle and for that, you have to read the book.
Note: Article also published in Saturday Post, Chennai.