Review: ‘The Odd 1s Out: How to Be Cool and Other Things I Definitely Learned from Growing Up’ by James Rallison

Hilarious stories and advice about the ups and downs of growing up, from a popularYouTube artist and storyteller.

Like any shy teen turned young adult, YouTube star James Rallison (“The Odd 1s Out”) is used to being on the outside looking in. He wasn’t partying in high school or winning football games like his older brother. Instead, he posted comics on the internet. Now, he’s ready to share his hard-earned advice from his 21 years of life in the funny, relatable voice his fans love.

In this illustrated collection, Rallison tells his own stories of growing up as the “odd one out”: in art class with his twin sister (she was more talented), in the middle school locker room, and up to one strange year of college (he dropped out). Each story is filled with the little lessons he picked up along the way, serious and otherwise, like:

* How to be cool (in seventh grade)
* Why it’s OK to be second-best at something, and
* How to survive your first, confidence-killing job interviews

Filled with fan-favorite comics and never-before-seen material, this tongue-in-cheek take on some of the weirdest, funniest parts of life is perfect for both avid followers and new converts.

Astute readers of my blog will have noticed that this isn’t my usual kind of read. I ordered the book for my son for Christmas, and since I’ve enjoyed what I’ve seen of TheOdd1sOut YouTube channel, I decided to give it a read.

James is a cartoonist who does storytime animation — he has a relatively simplistic animation style that he uses to convey relatable and funny stories. I like it when my son watches that sort of YouTube content, because it generally involves less OBNOXIOUS SHOUTING than the Let’s Play type channels, and more, you know, stories.

This book is short (unsurprising given the target audience is middle grade children), and filled with cute pictures that perfectly capture the mood of the various anecdotes — the pictures are freshly drawn, not just stills from the original videos. And there were a couple of genuine LOL moments for me, both of them in stories that I hadn’t already heard.

But here’s the thing. I haven’t watched a huge amount of TheOdd1sOut, but the videos I have seen are the most popular ones … and those seem to be the ones that are included in this book. There were only two or three chapters in this book that I hadn’t already seen the videos of. If the ratio had been the other way around (mostly new content with a couple of chapters of already-used anecdotes), I suspect this book would’ve earned the full five stars from me. And I can see that some readers might be put off by that.

Still, if you’ve got a YouTube obsessed kid who you want to encourage to read more, or one who’s a fan of James’s, this book is definitely recommended. It’s clean, funny and kid-friendly.

UPDATE: My son loves that there are so many stories he’s already seen in video form. So maybe the publishers know more about kids than I do!