Dungzilla
Written and illustrated By James Foley
This edition colouring by Paulina Gamez
Reviewed by Sophia Evans
DUNGZILLA is a hilarious, action-packed graphic novel that follows the shenanigans of the world’s foremost inventor under the age of twelve, Sally Tinker. Sally begins the story with a fourth wall break to introduce the main characters of the story; herself, Joe (her baby brother), and Charli Stevenson (the world’s foremost biologist under the age of eleven). Charli surprises Sally with an adorable beetle, a very special kind of beetle, a scarabaeus sacer, otherwise known as an Egyptian dung beetle. As any sane person would feel when having a ‘dung’ anything placed in their hand, Sally is disgusted. There is a smattering of dung synonyms, and the illustrations show Sally’s reactions entertainingly.
Sally accidentally uses one of her new inventions, the Resizinator, to embiggen Douglas (the dung beetle). Douglas grows and grows and grows, to the size of a truck and breaks through the wall of Sally’s lab. Sally, Charli and Joe are joined by Rosie Tinker (Sally’s grandmother) to chase after Douglas as he rampages towards the smell of dung, in this case towards the sewage farm. Douglas rolls himself a ginormous dung ball and rolls it off in search of somewhere to bury it.
James Foley has seamlessly integrated poo jokes, clever illustrations, scientific facts (including Sally’s own “scientific facts”) with a genuinely funny story. The facts about the dung beetle are well researched and represented through the illustrations, dialogue between characters and scientific diagrams (filtered through Sally’s point of view).
Originally published in 2017, this story is sure to delight junior inventors aged 8+, and those who like to laugh at dung puns and jokes. This new full colour edition also includes a bonus story One Small Step for Mammoth where Sally and her team head off to Mars!
Teaching notes
Teaching activity
Fremantle Press 2017
James Foley
Original review of black-and-white version by Tyrion Perkins in 2018 on Storylinks https://storylinks.booklinks.org.au/2018/04/17/dungzilla/
