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Book Cover Blurb:
Serenity laughs at responsibility.

But there’s nothing funny about this job…

The Prayer Club’s pet project is at her flaky best, dissing a health class assignment that has teens caring for chicken eggs 24/7 to simulate the round-the-clock nurturing a baby requires. But when an overwhelming responsibility falls in Serenity’s lap, where can she get help—from the friends she’s mocked, or the God she doesn’t quite believe it?

The Review:
Covers/Extras:
The front cover is a rather plain looking illustration of the blue-haired title character tossing an egg in the air with one hand, while holding a basket with a broken egg in the other against a pink background. The series title and volume number are presented at the top of the cover, while the Realbuzz Studios logo is placed on the lower portion of the cover. The tagline “America’s Premier Inspirational Manga” stretches across the bottom of the front cover.

The back cover is slightly more interesting. The upper quarter is dominated by an illustration of Serenity hunched over in a fairly grumpy mood. The blurb fills the next quarter, with the third quarter filled by a dark purple box containing favorable quotes from Melody Carlson, Terry Brown, and Stan Lee. The lower quarter includes a Serenity logo, a Barbour Publishing, Inc. logo, another Realbuzz Studios logo, and the bar code.

Extras include a one-page “Note from the Wardrobe Department” featuring an image of Serenity in an outfit that she wears briefly near the end of chapter three, a two-page “Chapter & Verse” spread, featuring low-res rough sketches of some story panels and the Biblical quotations that inspired them, a one-page promo for the Serenity website (www.serenitybuzz.com) and bios of Buzz Dixon and Min Kwon, and a one-page ad for the next volume of Serenity.

Content: (contains spoilers)
After the big test, Serenity and her friends from the Prayer Club have lunch and relax by taking a purity test that Sally downloaded from the internet. Their results are fairly well skewed towards purity, but Serenity begins to wonder how her mother would score on the test. As she begins to fill out the answers, it becomes depressingly clear that Serenity’s mom is going to have a very high score.

Serenity’s friend Kimberly “borrows” her test out of curiosity, thinking it will reveal more about Serenity. She is shocked by the results. When she shows it to the other members of the prayer club, they can’t believe the results, either, but they force Kimberly to return the test and apologize. This leads to a confrontation between Serenity and her mother.

The next day, the teens get an assignment to pretend to be parents by taking care of an egg baby. Due to an odd number of students in the class, Serenity is forced to be a single parent. However, she has no desire to complete the assignment. She infuriates her teacher by “accidentally” breaking three eggs, then throwing her fourth in the trash.

Since she blew off her homework assignment, Serenity has plenty of time to kill after school. Unfortunately for her, all of her friends were more conscientious, so Serenity is left to her own devices. Serenity heads into town and loses track of time. On her way home, she discovers a baby abandoned in a trash can.

Serenity’s so-far absent maternal instincts kick in: she takes the baby home with her and begins to think about keeping the baby and raising it herself.

Art:
Kwon’s art is clean and simple. There’s not a lot of detail in her characters, but they still manage to be expressive. The layouts are easy to follow. Backgrounds are very limited, however. Frequently, panels will just have a solid color or gradient blend of two solid colors for their background. When backgrounds are needed (mostly to define locations or time of day) they are drawn very simply in a consistent manner with the character art.

Comments:
I didn’t know quite what to expect from “America’s Premier Inspirational Manga.” I was pleased to find a fairly entertaining story. Aside from the Christian angle, though, Serenity feels like a somewhat derivative shoujo manga title. Not bad, but not something I plan to add to my purchase list.

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