Such a cute comic collection! Baby Beanie reminds me of many little ones I know. Teen and adult Beanie were relatable. The cartoons were well drawn and fun! ( )

Gentle and cute slice-of-life webcomics from the memory of Alina "Beanie" Tysoe, covering her young childhood in Russia, her teen years in New Zealand and adulthood in Canada.

Mild, pleasing humor. ( )

What’s Up Beanie is good but not great. This book wasn’t a disappointment by any means, but I’d be lying if I didn’t say I’d seen most the comics before. Every time she posts a new comic on Instagram, Tyson follows up with an explanatory sentence or two and I don’t think I realized how much I appreciated that until I was reading this book. Knowing her brief explanations behind the comics added to my experience in a way new readers would not know.

This collection is formatted as a bit of storytelling. The context is that Baby Beanie has come forward from the past to assure that Adult Beanie is making her proud. There are some mixed opinions on the matter as the story goes along but they do still agree on the most important thing… which I won’t spoil. I liked the formatting of this one as it gives it some cohesiveness but does not oversimplify.

I really, really like Tysoe’s drawing style. It reminds me strongly of newspaper cartoons and in such there’s something familiar about it. Only Tyson is telling different, more modern stories, and I think that’s important too. This book is technically filed under “women’s literature” which drives me bonkers – we don’t label anything with a male protagonist under mens literature! – but it’s all-around relatable, from childhood games to sneak-eating cheese when you KNOW you’ll regret it later. I also enjoy Tysoe’s color palette which has a lot of bright, 1950s retro colors that give it a pop but aren’t too aggressive. Really, I just generally like this comic… even though it’s not a groundbreaking collection I recommend the strip highly – either through the book or online. I’m happy to support her and hope she continues to share Beanie stories for years to come. ( )

Won an advanced reader copy in a giveaway!

In the ARC version, everything is in greyscale, but the artwork is still cute (especially with animals). This is a very light-hearted collection of comics. Some of the comics focus on Beanie as a child, a teenager, or in adulthood covering various relatable things from the innocence of being a child, a move to a different country, an everlasting love of dogs, etc. I enjoyed reading these.

3.5 ( )