THIS WAS SO CUTEEEEEEEEE!!! Highly recommend to anyone with a heart. The art style was a fresh take on an older style of illustration making the story feel nostalgic and relevant at the same time! And the story itself was just perfect. I'm going to buy a copy of my own for sure.

Thank you so much NetGalley and IDW Publishing for this arc!!

5/5 stars!

THIS WAS SO CUTE!!! I love Godzilla, monsters, cryptids, all that fun stuff, and this was just so cute and wholesome and exciting and heartwarming!! Some of the panels at the end made me tear up IT WAS JUST SO CUTE! I loved the story- I'd be just as pissed if I signed up for art camp and when I get there it's SPORTS CAMP GROSS! The disability representation was so good, and the art was really well done! The colouring especially I loved, it captured the heart of summer and the whimsy of the story perfectly. I'd like to go to this camp next summer plz thank yoouu

Thanks to NetGalley and IDW Publishing for the ARC.

I want a mini Godzilla as a friend, Minilla is so cute! This is such a fun story. I love the art style and the messages at the heart of the story: respect the planet, trust your friends, and be yourself. While it's a perfect graphic novel for a middle school audience, I'd also recommend this for anyone who enjoys kaiju movies and wants something a little lighter in tone.

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/6840194953

https://app.thestorygraph.com/reviews/4919816e-57a8-4441-9a49-c2790042bd87

Check out this review of Godzilla: Monster Island Summer Camp on Fable. https://fable.co/review/b104149f-a6c5-49b1-b0f6-0e899b7a2d87/share

Netgalley Review

Star Rating: ★★★

Worth the read, not my favorite, not my least favorite. Just a solid middle of the road read. Its Godzilla and you cant go wrong with Godzilla.

Like always read it and decide for yourself!

Oh wow, this was great! Godzilla and summer camp and monsters, and in graphic novel format, entertaining, engaging, and fun!

I really like Godzilla and Kaiju in general. I think the whole concept of giant monsters hidden away on Earth only to (mostly) wake up and fight. Each other is tremendous. I knew going in that Godzilla: Monster Island Summer Camp was geared to a younger audience, but I still had a great time with it.

A group of kids visit a summer camp, all of them thinking it’s a different Camp than when it actually is. None of them are right. Make It Summer Camp is under new management, and why is everything about competition and sports now?

Zelda is determined to stay safe and enjoy her summer camp, so she sneaks off to find a safe place to do just that. Then, she stumbles upon Monster Island where she meets a baby Kaiju named Minilla.

The story for this book from Rosie Knight was so much fun, and I really felt that the art work from Oliver Ono fit the story being told. I always love when the story and the art fit together. The entire book feels more cohesive and makes for a better story.

When Minilla sneaked into camo with the hat, sunglasses, and jacket, I legit laughed out loud. That was so funny.

I thought this book was really fun! This is the kind of book that could be turned into an entire series for kids that are interested in the world of Godzilla but either don’t like or aren’t old enough to watch the movies yet.

Thank you Netgalley and IDW Publishing for sending this book for review consideration. All opinions are my own.

OMG this is so cute! I loved the art style and the story. You never see Manilla and I didn't realize how much I loved him. Perfect for any Godzilla fan and wonderful for all ages.

Summer camp and Godzilla is a perfect match.

I had a blast reading this. The art is beautiful and full of summer light and emotion. The cast of characters are endearing and inclusive to everyone. The heart of the story is touching and fills my old grey heart with new life.

I couldn’t recommend this book enough.

This review was originally published on NetGalley.com. I was given an ebook freely by NetGalley and the book’s publisher in return for a voluntary and honest review.

Thank you Netgalley for giving me the opportunity to read and review this book. These opinion are completely my own.

Incredibly inclusive and very entertaining. I wish my cane allowed me to speak to Minilla. They are adorable. Fun imaginative graphic novel

I honestly loved it! It was sort of a brand new way to introduce Godzilla and other “monsters” to a younger audience without being scary. The artwork is amazing and had such a subtle, watercolor type of color palette. You get action, found family, friendship, and some fantasy elements. Not to mention it takes place at a summer camp so it’s perfect for the warmer season. Definitely recommend it.


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Really enjoyed this. As a big fan of Godzilla, I know that younger me would have loved this! Colourful and real fun - think kids will really enjoy this!

Thank you IDW Publishing and NetGalley for providing me with this arc in exchange for my honest review.

This graphic novel very quickly became a new favorite of mine. The cozy and creative art was great and I enjoyed reading it so much, I can’t recommend it enough! It had so many important messages while staying really fun and accessible! And the inclusiveness and diversity and the use of meaningful character names (explained at the end) were done so well! And by that I mean in a way that wasn’t distracting so yes like it’s normal hah which it is!! We live in a beautiful world with all kinds of people, who should all be included in fiction. Including characters with for example a mobility aid, in everything, without patronizing and with perfect solutions when it was a bit harder to do so, is the way it should be done in every story. As a person with mobility issues, I appreciated this so much and I practically screamed of delight when a broken mobility aid was replaced by a magical one in the monster world! I felt seen! And I repeat, it felt completely normal that the main characters looked different, had a bionic arm or a mobility aid,.. which is going to make kids feel represented, included and normal! And I absolutely loved the found family trope, the many unique “animals”, the kindness and the respect for nature (and even fighting for it) this included.

Zelda loves making comics and thinks she’s on her way to art camp but she ends up at a sports camp instead. She’s so lucky to end up in a cabin with Weezy and Rumiko, they quickly become the best friends who treat eachother with nothing but kindness and respect. Rumiko loves monsters and sports and Weezy loves painting.

Zelda accidentally ends up in another world with monsters, where she meets a mini godzilla (Minilla!), but something is wrong and of course there are villains to be dealt with which make Zelda and her friends have the most amazing unexpected adventure, including solving a big important mystery, which will change their lives in many different ways and made them have the best Summer Camp ever!

Many different monsters were represented in this graphic novel too, which I’m sure they will love if they get the chance to enjoy this graphic novel like I did!!

This was actually pretty cute! I will say this is for sure the younger audience. As it's not really for my age group. However, as a Godzilla fan I still had fun reading it. Basically it follows a girl at camp who's just trying to get by, meets Godzilla son, and from there things get crazier and weirder. It's about being independent and strong willed, while counting on friends to help you. At the same time some really cool drawings of Godzilla other monsters really helped make me enjoy it and bring me back to Godzilla of the Showa era. A solid 3 out of 5, 4 if you're a teenager for sure.

A fun middle grade read for kids and parents who enjoy watching Toho films together! It was nice seeing a broad range of representation that was handled well, particularly in the area of physical/mobility disability. The notes at the back about the inspiration for the three main characters names was a nice touch. In particular, the art here really stood out. While still clearly a Western style comic, the manga influences are clear, and especially appreciated given Godzilla’s origin. This is definitely a fun one, and I can’t see you going wrong by picking it up.

I loved this! The art is so expressive, the story is so fun and engaging. I loved all the characters, and my boy Minilla got to shine! I enjoyed this as an adult, but I know my 10 year old nephew would be obsessed with it so I’m definitely buying a physical copy when it’s released.

This is the cutest little graphic novel that actually teaches others about Godzilla's roots. Though it's not for a Japanese audience (built towards Americans) I like that introducing Mothra, Mini-zilla (Minilla here) and Godzilla are not seen as evil monsters, but rather, forces and agents of change and Earth. They are literal defenders of the Earth (Mothra, especially in this case) as well as symbols and forces of good. The thing I like is that they are nature itself, they are destroying things because corporations and people exploit their resources. The plot is easy to follow, though the text is not great for accessibility. The letterer did a wonderful job, and I'm sure it looks better in print, but a digital copy made the text too small and thin to be clear and accessible for those with visual impairments. I would recommend this as a wholesome and fun way to teach people how to leave the Earth a little better than we found it, and also a fun way to introduce children to kaiju!

Absolutely adorable and exactly what I wanted when I requested this one.
Some adorable monsters and kids saving the planet. Such a good little read!

An adorable and cozy adventure featuring a baby Godzilla & other monsters, a kids summer camp, and saving the world by crushing one ecological disaster at a time! Great cozy monster graphic novel that was perfect to read on a gloomy summer night.

I was sadly disappointed by this, the art is beautiful and I can see the potential in the story and characters but it all fell flat and it failed to engage me.

The plot was rushed with not a lot of world building or good character motivations. It felt like the author had a lot of ideas for what they wanted to include in the book and just crammed them together without considering if the different plot elements actually work together.

The story starts with the main character Zelda going to an art summer camp that she's been begging her mum to save up for as she wants to be a comic book artist when she's older, only to be disappointed when she arrives at camp that another company has taken it over and it's now a sports camp. It's here she meets the two campmates she shares a room with, Weezie and Rumiko. Weezie also wanted to work on her art over summer, so the two agree to skip out on the sports activities and Rumiko covers for them both. It's whilst skipping out on the sports activities that Zelda discovers a cave with a portal to an island full of monsters where she meets a baby one called Minilla which she then befriends.

If this was the only plot and the author took time developing the relationships between Zelda, Rumiko, and Weezie and Zelda and Minilla then I think this would be a much better book. Unfortunately, there's a lot tell instead of show and you don't actually get to see how these relationships are formed or get a lot of development of the characters, which meant I couldn't get connected to them. You're just told that these characters become amazing friends, but because you don't get to actually see these relationships form over time it feels forced. This is worsened as the author introduces other characters and love interests, which aren't necessary for the plot and waste space that could have been used to develop the girls and their relationships to one another. Add to this that the plot is also convoluted, with the connections between the human and monster world never really explained and the villain reasons flimsy and surprisingly not linked to the monster island at all, it just felt like the book tried to do too many things all at once. I still don't understand why the villains switched it to a sports camp, or why Zelda was introduced as a character who was obsessed with making comic art only for her to not make any for the majority of the book and just care about the monsters instead. You could remove the artist aspect of the story and nothing would have changed, especially with the ending

There is some lovely messages for younger readers around activism and protecting the planet, but I felt these were shoehorned in at the end and should have been a more consistent theme. When the characters talked about eco-activism and fracking it was in large paragraphs that felt like an info dump which might be a bit overwhelming for younger readers and definitely didn't read as natural dialogue. The villain confrontation at the end was cartoonish-ly evil (they mention it in the book but the villain character was so flat that it didn't excuse it) and there was no setup for it, or for why a fracking company would want monsters?

I did however really appreciate the disability rep in this. One of the main characters uses a cane to walk and it's through acquiring a magic cane that she's able to converse with monsters, plus there's another main character who is an amputee with a prosthetic arm. The representation I thought was really lovely and interwoven well into the story, I really liked that the names of the main characters came from various prolific women artists as well which was explained at the end of the book.

However, because the characters were never developed properly this good rep felt wasted. If the story was trimmed down and focused on only the central four characters (Zelda, Weezie, Rumiko, and Minilla) then I think it would have been a much better read. Also, confused why this book has Godzilla in the title when Godzilla only shows up at the very end.

While I liked the premise of this story and thought the art was great, I found the writing to be clunky with a lot of jumping around. The art style was perfect for illustrating kaiju and I loved the color palette. Fans of Godzilla will find plenty of references, and I found myself wondering if there were various other anime references sprinkled in as well. I really couldn’t get into the way conversations between Minilla and Zelda played out, with Zelda narrating out loud everything Minilla expresses in roars. I think it would’ve flowed better if Minilla had thought bubbles with text, used in tandem with the in-book concept that Zelda can ‘see’ what Minilla tells her. The story progresses quickly and the plot resolves itself very easily. This in combination with a jumpy narrative made things feel rushed and a little unsatisfying. Would’ve loved a little more plot development, especially in the lead up to more major kaiju reveals, but middle grade readers likely won’t mind the pacing in favor of action.