Think of this one as sort of Lumberjanes meets Teenboat. Campers fighting toxic masculinity. We have some magical elements and a battle for self-acceptance. THe message is fairly obvious but visually interesting.

'The Toucan Patrol' with story and art by Nico Naranjo is about a new member of the Toucan Patrol and his attempts to find his way and fit in.

Newb is the newest member of the Toucan Patrol, and the other members point out all is faults, like not having any ranking, or wetting his bed. Newb is forced to try to earn his badge by confronting the mythical snipe among other things. He sets out on a quest to earn his kerchief and slide, but the going is not going to be easy.

The Newb character is a total victim. The other kids his age are relentless bullies. The adult leader is either ignorant of or tolerant of the kind of bullying that Newb gets. I have a hard time trying to recommend this title to anyone.

I received a review copy of this graphic novel from Europe Comics and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Thank you for allowing me to review this graphic novel.

Perhaps interesting for some but I was not able to engage with this narrative despite myself. Perhaps improving the structure could help.

First I want to Thank Netgalley for this digital copy. I really thought the illustrations were awesome and detailed. It was the story that kinda left me wondering what just happened. It follows a little boy they call Newb and he is on a camping adventure with the Toucan Patrol to get his neckerchief and slide to be an official member of the Patrol. Newb seemed to be a lot younger than the rest of the group as he still peed the bed. I don't want to go into the story more as to not spoil it but I think it being a European graphic novel I am missing something.

The plot was a lot of fun and I really enjoyed the characters, but I didn't like the art very much, unfortunately. That's definitely more of a personal thing, though, so don't let that turn you away from picking up this wonderful story!

That was cute.

The story is quite short and it's the journey of a Newb in the Toucan Patrol - he's not an official toucan yet, so the other members keep teasing him about a lot of things. The "enemies" of the Toucans are the Snipes and every Toucan has to defeat one to become a member. The whole adventure happens in one night and it's a mixture of friendship, humor and fantasy.
The art was cute and the plot was easy to keep up with. It's a good children's story and I'd read more about this group of characters in the future :)

Small boy wants to earn his badge—or scarf—by camping overnight with the troupe, but things turn out to be a lot harder than he anticipates.
Why? Because nothing makes sense in this entire story. All kinds of creatures show up, then turn into something else, seemingly to teach him to be brave or believe in himself or something, but I can’t imagine any kid who reads this will think it was worth going through all that crap thrown at him.
I was never a Boy Sprout or any of those similar organizations—unless you count the Marine Corps—so I don’t know how true-to-life this is, but if it is I’m glad I wasn’t a part of it, because the other kids are so mean to him! The adults in charge do nothing about it, either. I can’t remember drill instructors being so harsh, and they get paid to be that way! If this was based on the author’s experience, I have no idea why he’d want to remember it, let alone celebrate it.
Bright and colorful, certainly nothing wrong with the artwork, but in a way that makes the story worse.
1.5 pushed up to 2/5

Unfortunately, The Toucan Patrol left me cold. The story is about Newb, a kid who wants to be a full-fledged member of the Toucan Patrol. For the life of me, though, I can't understand why anyone would even want to be a part of this troop -- they're all bullies, every last one of them.

After being taunted and teased by the troop all day for being a bedwetter and a chicken, Newb goes to bed that night and has a trippy, bizarre dream where he must battle the "snipes" to earn his neckerchief and slide (items which will earn him true Toucan membership). By the end of the dream, he's managed to get his neckerchief and slide.

The excessive teasing that goes on in this story is never really addressed -- by the end of the book, in fact, Newb has learned to deal with the bullying by teasing the others right back so that he was part of the gang. The sole adult supervising these kids doesn't seem to think it's a problem and almost encourages it at times.

This could have been a heartwarming tale of a kid overcoming his fears; instead this more often made me cringe and feel icky.

Absolutely awful. It was like some weird trip while you're on drugs. This was not appropriate for a comic book in the slightest.

I received this book from Netgalley in exchange of an honest review.

Well, this one was just horrendous. And I was so hoping for a fun story about a kid wanting to join a group of what I would call scouts. The Toucan Patrol. Sadly, I believe you either must be delirious with fever or just plain high to enjoy this story. It certainly was a trip, but not the good kind. I had absolutely zero idea what was going on, was it all a dream? Was it all true?

Then there was the bullying. I HATE bullying, and I am not happy how these kids made that poor kid feel absolutely crappy about everything. He is thirsty but he gets no drink from anyone because heaven forbid that he pees his pants or bed. They call him newb in jeering voices (and no I don't believe Newb is his real name), they scare him, they call him names. I just didn't like the group at all. I cannot for life imagine why anyone would want to join this group of losers.

Then the whole night stuff happens and well, at first it was quite nice/interesting. But then it quickly derailed and I had no clue if this was all true or if it was all a nightmare/dream. A lot of stuff just happens without any explanation. What I had expected from the whole: "By confronting his greatest fears." was something like him having to go alone in the woods and stay the night, or maybe letting him climb something really high if he was afraid of that. I didn't expect some kind of trippy weird as hell dream or whatever it was.

Plus I totally didn't like how he magically was all tough (since he was crying all the time about anything and everything) and how everyone just seemingly accepted him while the previous day they were all dicks.

Then there was the art. Which at times was pretty good, but sorry, more times I just didn't like it. Proportions were off (like newb being chubby, thin, stretched, chubby, normal, and so on).

So yeah, not recommended. Not at all.

Review first posted at https://twirlingbookprincess.com/

The Toucan Patrol follows a young boy, Newb, as he attempts to battle against the magical creatures known as Snipes as well as bullies, and earn himself his Toucan handkerchief to be fully accepted as a Toucan.

I worry I'm being too harsh in my rating for this. By no means is this a bad read: for one, I love that this is based off of the author's own experiences at camp. It feels very genuine and shows this young boy battling for acceptance. I really loved the art style, it was wonderful to look at and managed to capture the transition between the camping world and the magical world as both interwove with one another. The fact that this was also a mixed gender camp was great, I rarely ever see camps like that. There was something very Lumberjanes-esque about it all, and for that, I enjoyed it.

However, I was very uncomfortable reading this. For one, the characters, other than Newb, were all bullies, which was something I was not expecting. Their maliciousness and cruelty towards him, while never reaching physicality, actually upset me, and I feel that the authority figures never addressed it. I was unsure if him overcoming them in the magical world was also him overcoming the bullying, but something like that can have a lingering effect on you as you grow older, and the fact that nobody ever discourages the things they say and do outright was really upsetting for me.

In addition, I feel this could have been a lot longer. The bullying issue, for one, could have been addressed if the whole graphic novel was extended by another 50 to 100 pages or so. There also could've been more time spent developing the world and the characters, which in turn would have made the plot less confusing and helped me actually form an emotional connection to his journey.

There was another moment in this that made me uncomfortable. Newb is almost forced to kiss a character to complete a challenge, and it appears like him consenting- even as a young boy in camp, anyone can experience something like this- doesn't matter to them. He does consent, in the end, but then it's revealed the other character is now uncomfortable as they didn't want it to occur in the way it did, and Newb makes a joke about it at the end that just left a bad taste in my mouth, like neither of them giving consent was really addressed as it should have been.

I'm really sad that I didn't enjoy this as much as I could have. I will look out for future work by the writer, I think he's very talented as an artist and a writer, this just really wasn't for me.

This was an interesting first volume and it had a lot of potential. The art style was good and helped convey the story along nicely. I felt that Naranjo made Newb an accessible and likable character and i really liked following the story through his eyes. The other campers i did not like as much and found them to be less defined and rounded in comparison to Newb.

The adorable art and premise sucked me into wanting to read this one, especially as the cover reminded me a lot of "Lumberjanes" which is a personal favourite. A classic hero's journey type story and I love the details of all the other Toucan members showing up as he has to overcome different fears and properly become part of the patrol. Also the dreamlike quality of the story: was Newb imagining it or not? Perfect for fans of Lumberjanes and people who are part of groups like the Scouts.