Abridgments of two famous novels preserve each book's most compelling incidents, but the brevity of each precludes much of the original's richness. Notes and informational sidebars throughout provide story comment and historical context, but clutter the book design and are distracting. The watercolor illustrations for [cf2]Crusoe[cf1] and the oil paintings for [cf2]20,000 Leagues[cf1] nicely suit each story's mood and setting. From HORN BOOK Spring 1999, (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Gr 7 Up-Defoe's classic novel of shipwreck and survival, now nearly 300 years old, is abridged competently in this recording. The flavor of the 18th century language is retained, but the plot moves along at a pace more appealing to 21st century ears. The reader, Martin Shaw, has a pleasant voice, but unfortunately tends to trail off at the ends of sentences, losing whole words. As with all abridgements, large sections of the story and entire characters are omitted, but since most of the book tells of Crusoe's solitary sojourn on the island, this is not a major problem. This version is no substitute for the original, but it would be a supplemental purchase in libraries where abridgements are popular.-Sarah Flowers, Santa Clara County Library, Morgan Hill, CA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

A labored retelling of the classic survival tale in graphic format, heavily glossed and capped with multiple value-added mini-essays.Along with capturing neither the original's melodrama nor the stranded Crusoe's MacGyver-esque ingenuity in making do, Graham's version quickly waxes tedious thanks to forced inclusion of minor details and paraphrased rather than directly quoted dialogue in an artificially antiquated style ("You Friday. Me Master"). Frequent superscript numbers lead to often-superfluous footnotes: "Crusoe, a European, assumes that he is superior to other races. This attitude was usual at the time when the story was written." Shoehorned into monotonous rows of small panels, the art battles for real estate with both dialogue balloons and boxed present-tense descriptions of what's going on (the pictures themselves being rarely self-explanatory). Seven pages of closing matter cover topics from Defoe's checkered career to stage and film versions of his masterpieceand even feature an index for the convenience of assignment-driven readers.At best, a poor substitute for Cliffs Notes and like slacker fare.(Graphic novel. 11-14)]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.