Supa Nova

This striking new graphic novel series for young science fans is bursting with bright ideas and colourful, comic scenes. Nova is the youngest and most enthusiastic in her family of geniuses and it is hard to compete with her scientifically successful parents and sister. She is on the lookout for a brilliant, new, world-saving idea to promote her credentials, and what would be more perfect than a method for solving the globe’s plastic pollution problem?

Nova approaches the problem – as she approaches everything – with an unwavering positive attitude and, with the help of her AI system – Comet – gives life to her sister’s discarded chewing gum and turns it into an adorable, plastic-munching creature called Chomp!

Somewhat predictably, Chomp’s plastic-eating soon gets out of control on an epic scale, and Nova (and the rest of the neighbourhood) must contend with an enormous pink blob terrorising the local area. Chomp slithers about the town seeking out any items containing plastic and gobbling them up, thus adding more and more mass to his giant, globulous body. It is exciting to watch Chomp lay waste to the city’s waste and Timothy’s lively, bold and original illustrations offer a dramatic and modern take on classic disaster movie scenes, with hapless bystanders leaping for cover as plastic-filled buildings collapse.

However, despite their monstrous size, Chomp is not the real villain of the story: plastic is. Chomp’s appetite for everything from traffic cones to the very roads they sit on highlights just how much plastic we use in our lives and delivers an important ecological message that will be easy for all children to understand. Indeed, the narrative is often interrupted by rather obvious efforts to teach lessons about the dangers of too much plastic in the world. Even Police officers’ uniforms are made of plastic, and so are the giant nets they throw to try and capture Chomp.

How can Nova possibly reverse Chomp’s size and still save the planet from the plastic menace? The answer is, of course, by using science. That is the overwhelming message behind Nova’s story, and it dominates the book even more than the themes of family and ecology. Nova’s tale shows us that science is extremely cool and we should all take much more interest in it! It is a virtuous message, and a crucial one for young female readers, but its delivery is anything but subtle and, by the end, readers may feel somewhat fatigued by Nova’s relentless insistence that science is awesome.

However, Super Nova’s infectious enthusiasm and boundless energy make her a fun and engaging character for young readers to root for, and she is likely to find countless more ways of saving the planet through her scientific inventions in future episodes.