Tundra: Nature's Favorite Comic Strip »

Tundra launched in 1991 and was inspired by the cartoonist's upbringing in Alaska. Carpenter, who still makes his home in Wasilla, a small town outside Anchorage, manages to find fresh sources of laughter every day from his frigid and familiar surroundings.

From the vast frozen wilderness of Alaska, Chad Carpenter brings Tundra. The National Cartoonists Society named Tundra as the Best Newspaper Panel Cartoon of the Year in 2007. These are award-winning cartoons from a naturally wonderful place.

A tour guide might overlook some of the more quirky aspects of Alaska, but Carpenter sees it in a completely different light (even if that light only shows itself part of the year). Carpenter gives nature's residents, the furry and the not-so-furry, full attention. He also gives them voices that can bring a tear of laughter to the eye.

Tundra is full of talking snowmen, inept hunters, obsessed fishermen, and inviting wildlife looking for their next meal. It's also packed with an abundance of hilarity.

Tundra: Nature's Favorite Comic Strip features a "best of" collection with 560 cartoons from over 16 years of syndication.

School Library Journal

Gr 6 Up—The Far Side was one of the greatest comic strips in recent history. Gary Larson's offbeat humor, with its anthropomorphic bugs and lumpy human beings, has influenced countless similar strips, like Rubes, Close to Home, and a host of others. Tundra is another one of those imitators, though Carpenter's art comes a little too close to being more copycat than imitator in this collection of single-panel comic strips. Carpenter lives in Alaska, so there is a bias toward subjects like snowmen, hunters, and moose. It's not that it's not funny—there are some decidedly clever moments, like the witch in the grocery store with a cart full of sugar and gingerbread mix who says she's "building an addition" or the cannibals who are excited to get feet in their stockings for Christmas. But besides rarely straying from typically Larsonesque themes (despite the geographically specific characters), the collection suffers from lax editing. There are a number of jokes that appear in barely altered permutations throughout—in one case, two jokes about the origins of chiropractic medicine occur within a mere four pages of one another. Also, the snowman-with-a-melted-face gag is seriously overused, and the book is about 100 pages too long. All that said, as a supplemental title in a larger collection, this book will find its fans.—Jason M. Poole, Webster Public Library, NY