Networked: Carabella on the Run - Softcover

Badger, Mark; Jones, Gerard

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1561635863 ISBN 13: 9781561635863

Publisher: NBM Publishing, 2010

Synopsis

Some alien invasions are loud and bloody...some are quiet and friendly. The blue-skinned girl named Carabella thinks she’s escaping the oppression of her own world, but instead she’s exposing the earth to an invasion so soft and friendly that everyone welcomes it-until Carabella herself sees what’s happening and tries to make someone, anyone see that our websites and our cell phones are being used to steal first the privacy and then the freedom of everyone on earth.

About this title

About the Author

Burne Hogarth (Author) :

Reviews

Gr 7 Up–Carabella is blue. Literally. Her skin is the color blue. While she does her best to blend into college life and stay under the radar, her new friends Danielle and Alex notice that she has a real aversion to social networking websites. She also does not like sharing information about herself online in general. It turns out that Carabella is from another dimension, a place where individuals are branded with a color after their personalities are determined by similar technology. She meets Nick, who is developing a new kind of "soulshoe." This invention will monitor everything about a person and make it available online. While Cara rushes to stop this from happening, she must also contend with the Red Police, aggressive soldiers from her home who have come to reclaim her. The idea of this graphic novel–to educate readers about the dangers of giving up privacy online–is a noble one in theory, but it does little to make this tale contemporary and fun. Badger's art is extremely messy and incomplete, and lacks a real portrayal of the world Carabella is trying to save. While several science-fiction pop-culture references creep in, readers will realize that this story is more of an imitation of those tales than something original.Ryan Donovan, New York Public Library
© Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

This cautionary tale—a project of Privacy Activism, a group dedicated to online privacy education—outstrips simple purposefulness to provide a rip-roaring good story. Carabella, a curiously blue-skinned college student, tries to warn her fellow students about the data-mining nature of such ubiquitous contemporary trappings as social-networking sites, e-mail, and webcams. In the course of the story, her boyfriend creates novelty shoes that incorporate webcams and GPS, a government plot to spy on citizenry is revealed, and chase scenes and quick-thinking schemers abound. Taking full advantage of the comics medium, characterizations and scenes cleverly combine superhero visual metaphors with slacker posturing, dark cityscapes, and cluttered dorm rooms. Without resorting to didacticism or slowing the action, each character provides a point of view that requires careful reader evaluation to weigh the thoughtful mix of fact and opinion. This package offers much for casual readers as well as book groups and curriculum designers. Grades 9-12. --Francisca Goldsmith

Edition details

• Publisher: NBM Publishing
• Publication date: 2010
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1561635863
• ISBN 13: 9781561635863
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 134