The Garden of Enid: Adventures of a Weird Mormon Girl, Part Two Paperback – Illustrated, February 14, 2017

So this is how good Enid is. I bought the first book this morning and read it before going to work. I bought the second book over lunch and read it. Then while waiting for my husband to pick me up for our Valentine's date I read all the rest of the online content on tumblr. And once we got home I insisted on reading the contents of both books and all the subsequent online Enid content to my family, and cried during certain panes.Binge-reading Enid is the best.

Great explicit/implicit commentary on Mormonism's understanding of its own history. I was touched and edified by several panels. Thank you, Scott.

For the ten yers that it was an active strip I never missed a Calvin andHobbes strip. When Calvin and Hobbes hopped onto a sled and headed off to go exploring into a new and unknown adventure looking for a fresh start in a world full of possibilities on December 31, 1995, it was like a piece of me sledded off with them. For ten years Calvin, the boy with the active imagination who was always exploring the world around him as he contemplated the meaning of life, made me laugh, made me cry, made me ponder the meaning of my existence, and made me think about my place in the world around me. The pathos that Bill Waterson infused into his strip made it so you couldn’t not believe that the little boy and his tiger were real.I never thought that I could love or be touched again by a comic strip in the way that Calvin and Hobbes affected me. Then I discovered "The Garden of Enid: The Adventures of a Weird Mormon Girl." Enid, a weird Mormon girl with an active imagination who is always contemplating the meaning of life as she tries to understand the purpose of her existence and her place in the world, is the Calvin and Hobbes for the internet generation of Mormons. And now, thanks to Kofford Books’ two-part graphic novel presentation of Scott Hales’ amazing web based strip, Enid, like Calvin before her, will have her adventures preserved in a bound format so that her heartwarming experiences with life can be enjoyed as a whole for generations to come.As I started reading this book I grabbed a pack of those little tape strip Post-its to mark favorite pages so I could easily find them again and share them with others. This plan immediately backfired because, before long, I realized that I was marking nearly every page and that I was running out of Post-its. The book is just that good.This book will make you laugh, it will make you cry, it will make you contemplate the meaning of your life, and if you are a Mormon, no matter what kind you are or your relationship wth the Church, it will make you contemplate more deeply your faith and how you feel about and relate to the Church. Every Mormon should read the two Garden of Enid Graphic Novels.

Second volume in a wonderful series. A great book for teens and their parents to read together.

Part II is as wonderful as Part I, and as its Mormon Shorts predecessor. These Enid comics, which appeared individually and all fit within one timeline without necessarily filling in every detail of that timeline, follow this Weird Mormon Girl as she struggles to find out who she is and where she belongs and what she believes. You don't have to be a Mormon to follow along, although you'll miss some of the jokes without a good grounding in Mormon history. You don't have to be a girl to recognize the truth of her inner life (confession: despite my masculine Amazon name, I am a woman). You don't even have to be weird to appreciate Enid's responses, although, again, who doesn't/didn't feel weird as a teenager?There is so much more going on in these Enid comics than plain storytelling or good humor, although both story telling and laughter are key factors. I think you'll look at the teens in your life, or the awkward adults you work with, with more compassion after spending time with Enid. She changes you, by showing you what is really going on inside someone else's head and heart. You can no longer look at someone's awkward exterior without wondering what's really going on. And you'll laugh while you learn.Part II includes material beyond the comics already published online -- interviews, comics the artist drew but decided not to post, and commentary about what the artist was thinking as he drew the various comics.

I was given these by a friend, but enjoyed both parts so much, I wanted to put my review on here.I really appreciate an intelligent comic. Political, religious, whatever.When I offered to let my 12 year old read these, she read parts one and two through three times in one night. Another reviewer made a comparison to Bill Waterson's Calvin and Hobbes which I totally support.Enid is more intelligent than her years and while you do have to have a pretty solid familiarity with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints to fully enjoy her perspective, Scott Hales could put his humor to any subject and I'd be a fan.

Enid's story continues in this great follow up. She's a "weird" girl in that she's not weird in the way the rest of her Mormon friends are - she's weird among a weird people, but then so are all adolescents. Hales captures the essence of being a young woman, struggling to find one's place in life and to understand religion, family, friends, and oneself with limited life experience. Well done!A great read for anyone who has ever been a weird Mormon girl or boy.