TOON Books Go Back To Press

TOON Books has announced a return to press for its debut titles in advance of the books' upcoming April 7 publication date. Below is an excerpt from the TOON Books press release, available in full online as a pdf:

In response to overwhelming advance orders, TOON Books was taken by surprise and has had to go back to press for all three of its spring debut titles. Benny and Penny by Geoffrey Hayes is already out of stock with its distributor, Diamond Book Distributors, before its April 7 pub-date, and the same fate is imminent for Agnès Rosenstiehl’s Silly Lilly and Frank Cammuso and Jay Lynch’s Otto’s Orange Day.

“We were in the middle of preparing for our launch,” says Editorial Director Françoise Mouly, also the Art Editor of The New Yorker, “but I couldn’t imagine a more welcome distraction.” Self-published by Mouly under her RAW Junior, LLC imprint, and edited by Mouly with Series Advisor Art Spiegelman (Maus, In the Shadow of No Towers), the TOON Books are the first collection of high-quality hardcover comics for early readers. Heavily vetted by educators, the books “fill such a need in children’s publishing,” says Laura Lutz, Children’s Materials Specialist at the Queens Library.

Raymond Briggs' Studio, Upcoming Books

The Guardian shows a photograph of Raymond Briggs' studio along with commentary by the artist as part of a series called "Writers' Rooms." Briggs is the author of several books, many in the comics format. These include the classic The Snowman, which was adapted into a popular animated cartoon. Drawn and Quarterly notes an upcoming reprint of one of Briggs' early books, Gentleman Jim. Briggs reports that he is currently working on a book titled Time For Lights Out, "if I ever manage to finish it before I die."

Kids' Comic Con Reports

Publishers Weekly reports on the Kids' Comic Con, which took place at Bronx Community College on Saturday, March 29. “I was most impressed by the kids that came from outside Bronx," said organizer Alex Simmons. "There were kids from Yonkers, from Stamford, Conn.; from Brooklyn, Queens and Long Island. We even had a group of special needs kids.”

Timothy Callahan posts a personal report of his trip to the show with his seven-year-old son.

Andrew was eager to check out his stash of free comics! He took out the Simpsons issue and read the entire thing. He's NEVER read a comic by himself before. He likes when I read them to him sometimes, and he reads chapter books for extra-credit assignments from school, but he has never read a comic book story on his own. And he read the Simpsons comic from cover-to-cover, laughing and telling me about the funny parts. Even when his nutritious dinner of chocolate chip pancakes with a side of bacon arrived, he ignored the food--and he hadn't eaten anything except Cheez-Its since breakfast--to finish the comic. Could the trip to the Kid's Comic-Con have been a success?

"Little Archie" Story Online

In a commentary titled "Betty and Veronica: The Cultural Politics of Hair Colour," Jeet Heer links to a 1961 "Little Archie" story by Bob Bolling titled "The Long Walk."