The National Parks by Falynn Koch

History Comics: The National Parks: Preserving America's Wild Places
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Follow Bigfoot and Eagle through an historical look at the founding of America's National Parks. Bigfoot embodies the spirit of National Parks and explains to Eagle, the embodiment of the American People, how they all came to be. We start off with Yosemite and Yellowstone, and take a look at what acts of Congress and presidential actions made pieces of the country into National Parks. We also take a look at the founding of Park Rangers, and what their role was in preserving the parks from human disruption. As the idea of parks changed, activists were able to argue that land of historical significance, not just natural beauty, could become a National Park, as is the case with Mesa Verde National Park. 

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There are a LOT of concepts and topics in this book, that is reportedly for children, that would take a lot of context to set up, but if readers have some of the prerequisite knowledge and/or a passion for learning about National Parks, this would be a good book for them. The narrator includes a lot of early exploration efforts, like the expedition of Lewis & Clark, and from the get-go talks about the injustices and genocides carried out on Native peoples in order to secure some of these sites (like Yosemite and Yellowstone). Readers without the knowledge of early Americans and how they treated Native peoples might be shocked and miss a good chunk of the context of the parks. This would be good for possibly older elementary or junior high students who have had a solid foundation of the history of the founding of America. 
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There are a few areas where the author tries a little too hard to connect with current readers, and the efforts will probably hit true for a few years but fall flat once the context of the situation is lost with time.

In this example, Eagle and Bigfoot use something akin to a Snapchat filter, but the author has some redundancy in the tag, Hashtag #ParkChaser (which reads as Hashtag hashtag park chaser). The use of turtle text, though is appreciated (capitalizing each word in a hashtag to make it accessible for Screen Readers).
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Sara's Rating: 8/10
Suitability Level: Grades 6-10

This review was made possible with an advanced reader copy from the publisher through Net Galley.

Publisher: First Second
Publication Date: April 26, 2022
ISBN: 9781250265876 (Hardcover)

​Tags: Rating: 8/10, Suitability: Elementary School, Suitability: Middle School, Suitability: High School, Graphic Nonfiction, History, First Second