When I signed up for the Readathon, as I automatically do these days, I didn’t think I would end up spending several hours of it at Gilroy Gardens, a cute plant-themed amusement park for younger kids about an hour’s drive from us. The plan had been to do the park thing the weekend before my son’s fifth birthday, but it was a hot weekend and we decided to wait for yesterday when it was 10c cooler (it was 18c/64f yesterday compared to 28c/83f last weekend).

Anyway my day started off with some comics before we headed off on our hour-long drive

Extreme reading with an underaged driver

Gilroy Gardens was originally a garden and commercial nursery and there are lots of interesting trees and it’s just all very green and pretty. I like how there are lots of fruit/vegetable themed rides like the Garlic spin and the Mushroom swing.

I picked a book of short stories so it made for easy dipping in and out when I could manage it.

When we got home, I finished this fun read. I love Gwenpool and always enjoy the cameos from other comic series like Spider-Man, Deadpool!

My third read was this graphic novel by Italian Manuele Fior, set in Italy in 2048. Great illustrations, weird storyline.

I rather enjoyed this comic about a teen girl’s search for identity and her learning more about her Indian heritage. The cute drawing style reminded me of Jen Wang/Noelle Stevenson.

And ended my day with Chinese food and a Taiwanese-American story which I really adored. I love how the writer infused her story with so much Chinese-ness (food, traditions, sayings) yet it was also very American in its humor, in its 17yo main character learning to assert herself and be the person she wants to be and not who her parents expect her to be. I loved it and highly recommend it, whether you’re 17 or not.

So that was a fun readathon! I read four comics, one YA and one collection of short stories.

Hope you had a great readathon too! And if you’ve never done it before, give it a try next time! If I can do it with two kids at an amusement park, you can too!

You can always find out when the next one is here.