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Book Review of The Authoritative Calvin and Hobbes: A Calvin and Hobbes Treasury

The Authoritative Calvin and Hobbes: A Calvin and Hobbes Treasury
reviewed on


I think there are about 10 Calvin and Hobbes books out, and this one and The Indispensable Calvin and Hobbes are my favorites. All of the books are very funny, but some of them give the impression that the strips were printed larger so as to have fewer on each page and produce more books to sell, while offering less content. (Watterson has quit writing the strip, so there won't be any more.) Not these two books! They are packed with some of Watterson's very best episodes of C&H. Of all the comics I have ever read, C&H is the funniest and the best, from Calvin's diabolical love of weapons, dinosaurs, and destruction, to his weird self-serving philosophizing, and Hobbes--the stuffed tiger that turns into a talking playmate whenever no one else is around. Although Calvin's vocabulary contains a lot of words that a normal 6-year-old would never use, the English in the conversations is so natural that I use these books in teaching some of my advanced foreign students. The strange thing is that no matter how often I read some of the episodes, they still seem just as funny.