How to Be Cool and Other Things I Definitely Learned from Growing Up

I’m not much of a YouTuber, so before getting this book, I honestly had no idea who James Rallison was. Apparently, as of 2018, he had 7 million YouTube subscribers and was also an accomplished web-comics developer. Still is!

I picked up this book because I love comics and wanted to broaden my horizons. I’m now looking for more Rallison books, because this one was utterly fantastic.

The Rallison Style

His style in this first publication is unique, as far as comics or graphic novels go. It’s mostly prose, but each page also contains an average of about 1-2 panels of cartoons that serve as the visual punchlines to the jokes he writes in the text. I wasn’t sure I’d like it going in, but his humor is natural, incessant, and (best of all) clean, and he’s left me wanting more.

I often found myself chuckling out loud as I read this book, which is abnormal. I’m not really a laugher. Yet so many of the scenes were familiar to me, shared experiences of everyone who was at one point a child with siblings. Virtually every chapter is an essay about an event or some lesson learned in childhood, and Rallison’s method of writing and illustrating puts the reader right there with him.

There’s no nasty language in this book or immoral circumstances. There’s plenty of middle-school humor, though, which I’m OK with (I think my IG channel The_Proverbial_LEGO makes that obvious). I’ve got no problem letting my 12yo son read this book, and of course he loves it. Still, I don’t think you have to be a kid to enjoy the humor of The Odd 1s Out. In fact, this book about growing up is probably even funnier if you’re an adult—well, an adult with a sense of humor.

Rallison’s drawing style is very simplistic, involving featureless bodies and faces that he somehow still fills with emotion. All his published drawings are computerized, so his lines are always clean and his colors solid. Backgrounds add life to his panels, but he communicates just as well when he leaves the backgrounds blank.

Some Favorite Chapters

It’s hard to choose my favorite chapters from the 13 provided in this book, but I’ll try.

• Chapter 7: “Laser Tag” was a riot, and it’s one where I got final confirmation that I’d discovered a kindred spirit.
  
• Chapter 9: “Son, It’s Time We Talk about the Crickets and the Worms” was also amazing. They all were. It’s just all around a great book.

Conclusion

I highly recommend this book to those who are up for something a little different. Especially if you’re feeling a little down about getting older, this book might make you feel young again—and it also might remind you that being young wasn’t as a great as you remember!

©2024 E.T.