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Toon Books: The Next Batch
May, 29 2008
When I reviewed the first batch of releases from TOON Books, I was amazed that no one had really thought of this idea before: comics in book form aimed at 4-6 year olds. Upon reading interviews with series director Françoise Mouly, it was interesting to hear that she actually pitched this idea to several different publishing houses before deciding to do it herself (under the aegis of RAW Junior, the publishing interest that she and husband Art Spiegelman used to publish their Little Lit line). She was flatly rejected across the board -- not because people thought the books were a bad idea, but because there was no category that had been created for them. Mouly blazed a trail with the simultaneous release of the first three books, which have been with great acclaim.
The next three books will be released on a staggered schedule, starting in August of 2008. The next three releases fit nicely with the first three, and differ mostly in that all three are by artists primarily know for being cartoonists, not children's book authors. Like that last set of books, each volume in the new batch has a slightly different appeal, both in terms of subject matter and age group.
—Rob Clough, Sequart Research and Literary Organization
Little Lit TOON Books for Younger Readers
May, 16 2008
The classy Little Lit gang has come up with something new, TOON Books, which they describe as "the first high-quality comics designed for children ages four and up. Each book in the collection is just right for reading to the youngest but, perhaps most remarkable, this is the first collection ever designed to offer newly-emerging readers comics they can read themselves. Each TOON Book has been vetted by educators to ensure that the language and the narratives will nurture young minds."
The first volumes in this hardcover series are Silly Lilly and the Four Seasons by Agnès Rosenstiehl, Benny and Penny in "Just Pretend" by Geoffrey Hayes, and Otto's Orange Day by Frank Cammuso and Jay Lynch. Silly Lilly is the least kinetic of the three, using a deliberately flat style and even tone to provide a primer on the four seasons. Benny and Penny, on the other hand, features two bickering mice who fight over the reality of a pirate ship. Otto's Orange Day uses exaggeration and good-natured banter to establish its mood. All three are note-perfect for what they're doing.
—Jeff VanderMeer, Omnivoracious
Talking with Françoise Mouly: Comics for Early Readers
May 2008
SZ: What made you decide to publish comics for such a young audience?
Mouly: I've always thought of reading as one of the most pleasurable activities around, but I was shocked to realize, when my own kids reached the age of six, that reading is only fun once you get on the other side of that massive literacy barrier. Comics saved the day for our family. When we emerged from nearly a year of nightly comics reading, I thought, "This has been far too pleasurable to keep to ourselves!"
SZ: The term early reader or emerging reader usually suggests controlled vocabulary and word counts. How are those factors being taken into consieration in TOON Books?
Mouly: I worked very closely with teachers and educators on the one hand, artists and authors on the other, from the conception fo the books through the editing process. We kept refining the stories, replacing hard words with easier ones, ad reworking the visual storytelling to provide a vivid, exciting reading experience. In 2005, the Maryland State Superintendent of Schools launched a "Comics in the Classroom" initiative that embraced the books. Teachers there are using them in kindergarten through second grades, as well as in some pre-K programs. Another extremely encouraging development for us is that Renaissance Learning has adopted TOON Books in their Accelerated Reader Program.
SZ: What do you say to educational conservatives who insist that comics aren't literature?
Mouly: Today's "graphic novels" (a euphemism adopted to pacify those educational conservatives) are in museums, bookstores, and libraries, and they win major book awards. The battle that my husband Art and I fought 30 years ago--for comics to be taken seriously--seems to have been won. I'd love to get those educational conservatives into the room with us when we read with first- and second-graders. Within a page or two, the kids are piled on top of the book, reading aloud together and actually doing the voices. They fully inhabit the story.
We live in an increasingly visual world; it's time to redefine literacy to include visual literacy, which is much more intuitive for children. Comics get kids to love books. My husband calls them "a gateway drug to literature."
SZ: Where there particular children's books or authors who influenced your vision of TOON Books?
Mouly: For me the gold standard is American children's book publishing of the 1940s and 1950s, which saw the emergence of authors like Margaret Wise Brown, Maurice Sendak, Crockett Johnson, and so many others. These talented artists and authors were given free rein, and each book was highly original. The result was a vibrant milieu of artists, really engaged with what they were doing, and we're still reading those books; they have become today's classics. I've tried to create a similar atmosphere for the artists who are doing our books.
—Stephanie Zvirin, Booklist Magazine
Comics in Class
April 25, 2008
Picture this: You are sitting in class and pow! Your teacher has been transformed into Superman. Bam! Your textbook is a top-secret manual on harnessing your own superpowers. Krak! A classmate has turned green and has quadrupled in size. Another is swinging across the room on a superstrong spider web. And Garfield is chasing Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse around a desk. What are comic book characters doing in a classroom?
In some places, they are part of the lesson. Schools around the country are using comic books to teach reading and other subjects. The Maryland State Department of Education has developed a comic book curriculum using classic Disney comics. After a successful test, it is being used in about 200 classrooms, and continues to expand. The state has introduced a new series of original comic books, Toon Books, in first and second grade. The series was created by Françoise Mouly, art editor of The New Yorker magazine, and her husband, Art Spiegelman, a prizewinning comics artist.
Another program, the Comic Book Project, aims to improve kids' reading and writing skills. It reaches 22,000 kids in 850 schools nationwide. The program was started in 2001 by Michael Bitz, of Teachers College at Columbia University, in New York City. Kids write and draw their own comic books. "There is a growing movement in education that's looking at literacy of all kinds," Bitz told TFK.
Should We Take Comics Seriously?
Comic books haven't always made the grade with parents and teachers. They were once seen as a waste of time or a source of concern. "Usually teachers tell us to put comics away," says Deshaun Osborne, a fifth grader at Magnolia Elementary, in Joppa, Maryland. "I was shocked to hear we'd be using comic books." His class is reading about women scientists in a collection written in comic book style.
As teachers seek creative ways to improve reading and writing scores, comic books are seen as a tool to get kids revved up about reading. Nancy Grasmick, Maryland's state schools superintendent, was inspired to use comics, in part, by kids' reactions. "Students would get so excited about reading comic books," she says.
Fans agree that comics help introduce kids to important features of fiction, such as narrative structure, tone and character development. They also include context clues for difficult words. "The teachers love it," says Grasmick. "They think it captures students' interest and contributes to accelerating reading skills." Darla Strouse, the head of the comics program in Maryland, points to one middle school teacher who reported that students who read graphic novels books that are similar to comicsowrite in greater depth.
But not everyone is convinced. Critics see comics as nothing more than empty entertainment. Diane Ravitch, an author and education professor at New York University, in New York City, says comics most often use too-simple story lines and language. "Students are not encouraged to think in complex ways about how language is used," Ravitch says. "(Comic books) are no more educational than watching children's favorite TV programs."
Coloring Inside, and Outside, the Lines
There are no studies to measure whether reading comics boosts test scores or skills. Still, the Comic Book Project is showing teachers how using comic books can help them teach reading and writing. Reading comics encourages "creative and critical thinking," Bitz says. "It touches on the things we're trying to achieve in language arts, but in a unique way."
Sherri Pittard, a teacher in Cleveland, Ohio, says the Comic Book Project has inspired her students. One struggling writer found his voice and created a prizewinning comic two years in a row.
Pittard also points to how much kids enjoy the work. "They don't realize they're learning," she says. "It's a little trick."
Claire Dreis, a fifth grader in Pittard's class, doesn't mind being fooled. "Drawing, coloring, making up stories it's just fun," she says.
—Kathryn Satterfield, Time for Kids
Don't Miss the Debut Titles from TOON Books -- Comics to Get Young Children Reading!
April 11, 2008
The star power of New Yorker arts editor Françoise Mouly and her husband, Pulitzer Prize winner Art Spiegelman, may have given the new TOON Books line its first blast of attention. But it's the books themselves that are stealing the spotlight, and deservedly so. The first three releases from the imprint, all of which have had to go back to press pre-publication to fulfill orders, are cleverly crafted and beautifully illustrated works that show great promise for the publisher.
BENNY AND PENNY IN JUST PRETEND manages to capture the magic and frustration of a brother and sister playing together, fighting and making up, all without talking down to its intended audience. Geoffrey Hayes, the popular illustrator behind Margaret Wise Brown's WHEN THE WIND BLEW and the creator of the series of books starring Otto and Uncle Tooth, has a knack for knowing always how to say just enough to tell his story, letting the reader absorb the surprisingly intricate art to gain the full effect.
Not surprisingly, the other writers and illustrators who have joined the TOON Books stable also have long and impressive histories in the genre. Author Jay Lynch was a pivotal figure in the underground comics scene of the '60s. Frank Cammuso has been nominated for an Eisner Award, one of the top honors in the graphic novel field. Agnès Rosenstiehl is a superstar in the children's book field in France.
The creators have a joy and respect for the material that translates onto the page. The result is something fresh and fun. The protagonist of SILLY LILLY AND THE FOUR SEASONS dances through a full year with so much enthusiasm that it's infectious. OTTO'S ORANGE DAY, the longest and most complex story of the three, shows that getting what you want is not always all it's cracked up to be, so you'd better be careful what you wish for. But the lesson learned here --- as with BENNY AND PENNY IN JUST PRETEND --- is never condescending.
TOON books build on a solid tradition of comics storytelling in this country. They have a hint of the subversive attitude that fueled comics from the turn of the 20th century up to their high point in the '50s, when single issues regularly sold a million or more copies. Since then, comics have had their ups and downs, both in terms of sales and cultural respect. TOON books show that the format is ready to return to its glory days, and a new generation of comics readers weaned on these lovely books will be ready and waiting.
—John Hogan, Bookreporter.com
Bookreporter.com Interview with Françoise Mouly
April 11, 2008
New Yorker art editor Françoise Mouly and her husband, acclaimed cartoonist Art Spiegelman, recently launched TOON Books, a new line of comics designed for children ages four and up. Its inaugural titles, now available in stores, are BENNY AND PENNY IN JUST PRETEND, SILLY LILLY AND THE FOUR SEASONS and OTTO'S ORANGE DAY. In this interview with Contributing Editor John Hogan, Mouly describes how her son, a reluctant reader, inspired the idea for this line and explains the benefits of these comics over conventional picture books. She also discusses how the books will be incorporated into school reading programs, shares some of the feedback they've received from teachers and librarians, and muses on the constantly changing attitudes towards comics.
Where did the idea for the TOON line come from?
The TOON Books are the books I wish we had had when our kids were in first grade. Until that moment, my husband and I had both shared wonderful moments reading with our kids, but when the teacher started assigning "easy readers" for us to spend evenings with, the joy went out of reading for both the kids and us. It was then I felt I discovered some sort of magic bullet that could cure all the ills in the world: comic books! Fortunately, I had a lot of French comics at my disposal (I read in French with my children), and that really got us through the nightly readings, especially with our son, for whom it took much longer before the little "I CAN READ" light bulb went on. For months and months, we cuddled up with comics: there was something for him to look at and he loved them. My husband sacrificed a valuable collection of old comics to fatherhood. When I realized how few good kids' comics were being published in the U.S. anymore, I decided that it was where I had to turn my attention.
Why did you choose to start this line now?
It took me 10 years to get here. Once I realized that getting good comics for kids was just as important as advocating for comics as art or literature had been decades before, the first step was to edit --- together with Art --- broadly aimed anthologies of comics for children of all ages, the Little Lit books, with contributions by the best cartoonists and children's book authors we knew. Then five years ago, I started focusing more narrowly on comics for early readers --- the books that became the TOON Books --- but I couldn't convince mainstream publishers to publish in a format that didn't already exist. Finally last year, I decided to return to my roots and publish the books myself.
What are the characteristics that define TOON Books?
To restore interest in the publishing of good comics for children is a vast endeavor, so it was important to keep what we wanted to accomplish with the TOON Books very focused: the goal was to develop a collection of high-quality comics specifically aimed at beginning readers. I worked very closely with artists on one hand and educators on the other to make sure the stories and the vocabulary were just right for children who are learning to read on their own.
How do you envision these books being different from illustrated children's books?
Of course both comics and picture books rely mightily on the art, but that's about all they have in common. When doing books for early readers, I think comics have a very distinct advantage, which is that the reader can follow the narrative thread from the visual flow. All the conventions of comics --- the dialogue in speech balloons, the passage of time made manifest, the facial expressions and gestures, the varying size of the panels and of the lettering --- contribute to propel the reader along.
What kinds of stories are you hoping to tell?
That is the first and most important step: to work with artists who have great stories to tell, stories that will enchant young readers. Fortunately, first from my work with RAW and then from my work as the Art Editor of The New Yorker, I'm in touch with most of the best narrative visual storytellers working nowadays, so it was a matter of choosing the artists interested in this project and willing to put themselves through the difficult discipline of working for a young audience.
The books are beautifully printed. How did you determine what the look and feel of the physical products were going to be?
I had my own ideas of what the design of the books should be, and have always known how important the feel of a book as an object is in making you fall in love with it. I wanted books that a child would perceive as a treasured gift and that would make him or her want to go back to it over and over again. I was very fortunate to get the help of a terrific designer, Jonathan Bennett, who is also a cartoonist himself. Jon immediately embraced the central idea, which was to make the books feel like instant classics. The design evokes classic children books of the '40s and '50s or even Little Golden Books with their spine designs, but is also eminently modern. We all agreed it was important to produce beautiful book objects, because well-produced, treasured children's books were the point of entry for all of us and for most book lovers we know.
What makes comics a good forum to use to teach kids to read?
As Art puts it, comics are a "gateway drug" to literacy. They are a perfect point of entry to make kids enjoy reading, because reading a well-told comics story is intensely pleasurable. Visual literacy is far more intuitive for young children than word literacy. When a visual narrative is clearly told, the child will get a big part of the story through the pictures. In a conventional easy reader, to make any story accessible to an emerging reader is a high wire act: if the words are too easy, the child will get bored, but if they are too hard, he or she might get discouraged. Educators say the ideal match is when a child is comfortable with 85% of the words, but can work out or guess the remaining 15%. This is where comics have such a big edge over conventional books whose story is told in meager paragraphs of simplified words. When comics are done well, the author can tell a very rich story using the words, the pictures and all the other narrative conventions of comics in what Barbara Tversky, a psychology professor at Stanford University, calls a multi-modal mode of communication.
Have you gotten any pushback from teachers or librarians who didn't want to accept comics?
Yes, there's a lot of resistance to the idea of comics for young children. It's not that long ago that teachers and parents ripped comic books out of children's hands and threw them in the trash, when not on bonfires. Many teachers or librarians still think that comics can only be the "comic book version," meaning the dumbed-down version of "real" books. This is similar to someone dismissing Abstract Art by saying that a child of three could have painted that. Such a critic may not have encountered a Pollock, a De Kooning or a Rauschenberg. But, fortunately, a lot of the a-priori prejudices against comics have tended to evaporate once the would-be detractor sees our books. At a recent convention, a librarian who had stopped by at our distributor's --- Diamond Book Distributors --- booth, picked up a TOON Book and exclaimed: "Oh! I didn't know you also had real books!"
Do you expect more, or do you feel attitudes are changing?
Both are in the offing I think. On one hand, many educators feel threatened by a medium that they are not familiar with and that can seem unpenetrable to them. And frankly, it's also true that it's a vastly expanded universe now, and that there are many comics or graphic novels that are absolutely NOT appropriate for children. So, it does scare the uninitiated. On the other hand, the landscape has entirely changed from the days when we did RAW and certainly since MAUS was first published, over 20 years ago. Comics --- or, as they are now dubbed, "graphic novels" --- have become respectable: they are shown in museums, taught in universities, eligible for literary prizes and stocked in most bookstores. Until very recently, the only area of comics that wasn't thriving was comics for children. Let's hope that with the TOON Books, we are now only seconds ahead of our times.
What positive responses have you gotten?
Almost all the librarians and teachers we have been in touch with have been hugely supportive. As far as they are concerned, the TOON Books fill a very pressing need in children's book publishing. While there are great picture books to read to young children, and rich literature for children eight or nine and up who are fluent readers, there are actually very few good books for the child at the stage he or she is discovering reading. Many of the adults who are in contact with kids every day, especially librarians and teachers, are eager to get them comics because they know it is something that the kids love. They are confident enough to believe that if the kids are enjoying reading, they'll become lifelong readers. There are few studies on reading comics and literacy, but the few that exist show a correlation between highly literate readers and readers of comics. So the small cohort of enlightened librarians and teachers out there is definitely opening new worlds of possibilities.
You're working with several people who have had a long history in the industry, yet the books' contents are new and fresh. How have you chosen the writers and artists you're working with?
Good stories; artists willing to go through the process.
What are your goals for the Toon Books line?
We are hoping it will contribute to many more good comics for kids being published.
How are these books going to be used in schools?
We are absolutely thrilled about the enthusiastic and immediate response we have gotten from so many educators. They are quite a few individual teachers taking the initiative and bringing our books and other comics in the classroom. School Library Journal, admittedly the most influential publication for school libraries, recently had a cover article about kids' comics where they featured our books. The TOON Books have also been accepted in Renaissance Learning's Accelerated Reader program, which is used in over 60% of schools. And the Maryland State Superintendent of Schools, Dr. Nancy M. Grasmick, has adopted the TOON Books in her pioneering Comics in the Classroom initiative for grades K-2. Selected Maryland teachers will read our books with their class and contribute students' comments as well as their own suggested lesson plans, the best of which we will post on our website, www.TOON-Books.com.
—John Hogan, Bookreporter.com
In praise of Françoise Mouly
Tuesday April 8, 2008
Jeet Heer has a lovely essay explaining why the New Yorker art director, Raw co-founder, Toon Books publisher and, yes, wife of Art Spiegelman doesn't get half the credit she deserves.
To understand what Mouly brought to comics, compare Arcade (a magazine Spiegelman edited with Bill Griffith from 1975 to 1976) and Raw (edited by Spiegelman and Mouly from 1980 to 1991). Arcade is slightly better designed than a typical underground, but not by much. It's magazine size and had white paper. The main editorial task of Arcade was to round up the best cartoonists and get them to focus on coherent stories, rather than engage in their penchant for dope-inspired free associations.
Raw was an entirely different animal from Arcade: Oversize and with lots of extras thrown in (torn covers, fake bubblegum cards, inserts of the early chapters of Maus). In effect, Raw brought the issue of production values to the fore. This is also the case with the books she's edited. Mouly brought to comics some of the aesthetics of the arts and crafts wing of small press publishing (a movement that flourished in the 1970's when Mouly was forming her aesthetics). These days, it's normal for cartoonists to expend an enormous among of energy making sure that their book design matches their content (see any recent book by Chris Ware, Seth or Ivan Brunetti). This simply wasn't true before Mouly came into the picture.
—Chris Mautner - Newsarama
Five questions for Françoise Mouly
April 2008
Françoise Mouly, co-founder (with Art Spiegelman) of
RAW magazine and art editor of The New Yorker since 1993, has a new venture. TOON Books debuts this spring with three books: Benny and Penny in Just Pretend by Geoffrey Hayes, Silly Lilly and the Four Seasons by Agnès Rosenstiehl, and Otto’s Orange Day by Frank Cammuso and Jay Lynch. But are they picture books? Comic books? Easy readers? Françoise explains below.
1. What’s the difference between TOON books and a) regular comic books and b) regular easy-to-read books?
The artistic and literary qualities that we hope are at the core of the TOON Books are often lacking in standard easy-to-read books, which tend to be made with good intentions but little creative impulse. How is a child going to learn to read if she is presented with books that offer none of the pleasures of reading?
I’m not sure exactly what a “regular” comic book is, but, since the phrase can seem pejorative to the uninitiated, I’d point out that TOON Books are more durably bound in the hope of being re-read often. They came from the realization that — as my husband, Art Spiegelman, puts it — comics are a gateway drug to literacy.
2. What’s the difference between a comic book and a picture book?
Both have pictures, but the similarities end there. Comic books offer a visual narrative, with words as only one of the elements intertwined with the pictures. The visual narrative in a comic book helps kids crack the code of literacy, teaching them how to read from left to right, from top to bottom. Speech balloons facilitate a child’s understanding of written dialogue as a transcription of spoken language. In a sense, comics are similar to face-to-face interaction. Comics blend words, images, and facial expressions with panel-to-panel progression, sound effects, and even shifts in type size to engage readers and propel the story. Many of the issues that emerging readers have traditionally struggled with are instantly clarified by comics’ simple and inviting format.
3. Do you think children need to learn how to read a comic book?
A child entering school encounters an enormous shift in how to learn. Up to that point, he has been able to grasp and make sense of the world in an intuitive way, but when he is learning to read, he has to proceed in a non-intuitive, narrower, more linear fashion, in a way that doesn’t reward trial and error. A five- or six-year-old child is, visually, very literate. No parent or teacher has ever had to teach him or her how to find Waldo (which is a blessing!). While we are all decrying the loss of reading ability, maybe we should also be celebrating the advent of a new kind of visual literacy, where our kids are way ahead of us in computer skills and video games, learning new skills every day at an amazing pace. Yet for me, there’s one essential difference between a child downloading a video from YouTube and a child reading a book: when a child reads a book, he has control over the medium. He gets to turn the pages, reread parts that he likes, and he is making the story happen in his head. He experiences the firsthand pleasures of reading.
I took our books to schools and read them with first and second graders. The kids recognized the visual style as akin to Saturday morning animations and immediately felt that the books were for them. Young boys were especially thrilled, because they perceive comics as a “big boy” medium.
4. Do you worry that the child-centered nature of comics is being lost, that they are one more over-commodified thing targeted at young consumers?
Roger, you are teasing me here. You know I have spent my whole adult life arguing that comics as a medium can produce works of art and literature just like any other medium. But, all kidding aside, it seems true that, as the medium grew up, kids got left behind. So that’s precisely why, after saying for decades: “Comics, they are not just for kids anymore,” Art and I are now saying, “Comics, they are not just for adults anymore.”
5. What do you hope TOON books will do?
TOON books should convince any skeptics left in the house that comics can open a child’s eyes to reading’s wonders. My husband and I both developed our love of literature through comics. So did our kids. Now we want to share that pleasure with a new generation.
—Notes from the Horn Book | Vol. I, No. 2
Review of Silly Lilly
April 1, 2008
This graphic-early-reader entry from Toon Books is itself an objet d’art. The slight story, in basic comic-book format, briefly and joyfully bounds through the seasons at the rate of four panels per page. The crisp, bright watercolors depict Lilly, a bouncy, endearing child with black pigtails and vim for life, as she happily engages each season. In the spring chapter, “Silly Lilly at the Park,” she shows her teddy bear what she likes to do at the park: dance, jump and nap. In summer, she daintily tiptoes through the shore’s shallow water, clad in her red two-piece, finding little treasures and surprising herself with a snail hidden within a shell. Fall is summed up in bite-size tastes of a sampling of colorful apples. Winter, of course, offers bountiful snow and Lilly’s wayward snowballs. Emergent readers will be drawn to Lilly’s ebullient perspective and captivated by the uncluttered layout; the easy lesson on the seasons is a bonus.
—KIRKUS Reviews
Hooked on Comics
Spring 2008
“I like to make something with my own hands,” explains Françoise Mouly. The art director for The New Yorker stands at a light table in her home studio in downtown New York City, fingers covered in glue. She’s pasting in text changes for TOON Books, a new series of hardbound comics for beginning readers that she and her husband, Art Spiegelman, are publishing under their RAW Junior imprint. Six titles are due out this spring and fall. [Update: Due to high demand, Raw Junior will release all three comics simultaneously on April 7.] Contributors so far include Geoffrey Hayes, Frank Cammuso, Jay Lynch, Eleanor Davis, Spiegelman, and French picture-book star Agnès Rosenstiehl, whose Silly Lilly Mouly adapted into comic-book form for the project.
Mouly was inspired to start the series when she and Spiegelman saw the ways their daughter and son learned to read (before they started raiding Spiegelman’s mint comic collection). TOON books aren’t just charming—they contain building blocks for both verbal and visual literacy. Mouly (who also happens to have studied neuroscience herself) thinks both are vital, despite the dispiritingly prevalent view that “the whole point of being literate is to leave the pictures behind.” She worked with educators to ensure that the books are pedagogically sound, then road-tested them in classrooms. The state of Maryland—which recently launched a program to use comics in schools—will use the TOONs as textbooks.
In Mouly’s vision, bookstore chains will have a comics section just for children, and parents will be able to grab a TOON book from a display table at Costco. “Kids love books,” she says. “They genuinely do.”
—PRINT Magazine: Emily Gordon
Excerpt from: Picture this: Teachers are using comics, now called 'graphic novels,' to captivate reluctant readers
March 22, 2008
Comics are infiltrating the schoolhouse like never before because they are reaching that most elusive of creatures -- the reluctant reader. Faced with a generation raised in a visual environment dominated by television, the Internet and electronic games, teachers and librarians have found comics will lure readers -- especially boys -- who have a limited interest in books.
It was the how-to-get-a-boy-to-read conundrum that propelled Francoise Mouly, co-editor of Raw magazine and the New Yorker art editor, into producing comic books for young readers herself. Mouly has two children with husband Art Spiegelman, the author of Maus, a Holocaust memoir that is considered one of the granddaddies of the graphic novel format, and which won a 1992 Pulitzer Prize. Her daughter, Nadje, learned to read after a few weeks of concentrated effort. Despite being raised in the same environment -- ''surrounded by books, with parents who read to them,'' her son, Dash, now 16, struggled.
''I was running out of books I could use with him,'' Mouly said, so she turned to Spiegelman's vast collection of comics -- Krazy Kat, Little Nemo, Batman. That worked.
''My husband sacrificed his comics to fatherhood, but it was a good cause, and it allowed Dash to find a path to success,'' Mouly said. ``It made us both realize how much of a magic bullet comics could be. Children will learn if there's something in it for them and if it's pleasurable.''
The personal experiment made Mouly realize how divorced comics had become from childhood. ``Dash had friends who came to the house and had never seen comics before.''
In response, she and Spiegelman produced three comics anthologies -- the Little Lit series -- aimed specifically at readers age 8 to 12. Next month, she's launching Toon Books, which takes the comic book offensive to its youngest audience ever: beginning readers. The new line debuts in April with three titles -- Benny and Penny by Geoffrey Hayes, Silly Lilly by Agnès Rosenstiehl, and Otto's Orange Day by Frank Cammuso and Jay Lynch. The books have already been adopted by Renaissance Learning's ''Accelerated Reader'' program, used in 60 percent of American classrooms.
—Miami Herald: by Sue Corbett
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Silly Lilly Signature Review from Publishers Weekly
March 15, 2008
"What is there about Comics that makes children like them so well?” An exasperated schoolteacher posed this question in an article from the 1940s chronicling the uphill battle she and her colleagues were then waging against comic books, which they considered sub-literary fare. The battle lines have long since been redrawn, the graphic novel having attained critical mass and the comics aesthetic having slowly inched its way toward children’s literature respectability on the backs of occasional forays into the genre by Maurice Sendak and others, and of more sustained efforts such as the Little Lit
series edited by Art Spiegelman and Françoise Mouly. Now New Yorker art director Mouly, with Spiegelman as in-house adviser, takes the field again with the release of the first three titles from Toon Books, an innovative line of early readers presented in comics format.
On the evidence of Rosenstiehl’s initial contribution, Dick and Jane may now pack up their things and leave town for good. In this little marvel of distilled storytelling, five wee seasonal vignettes, starting and ending with spring, place a spry young girl in familiar situations that give free rein to her curiosity and love of action. As Lilly plays in the park, finds a snail at the shore, samples a basket of apples, hurls snowballs and swings on a swing, her bright thoughts and warblings appear overhead in speech balloons, in words of one to three syllables. Twice, a teddy bear serves as the straight man; in the winter scene, for example, he impassively takes a snowball on the chin (“Oops! Sorry, Teddy! I was only kidding!”). This comic moment, like others that Rosenstiehl extracts from her rigorously pared-down materials, draws us directly into Lilly’s emotional world, where attention is routinely paid to everything, from a lowly dandelion on up. To know Lilly is to want to know what she has to say. Apple-cheeked and graceful, she’s nobody’s fool, and her expressive action poses double as telltale clues to the child poised to begin decoding the printed word independently. Rosenstiehl’s uncomplicated layouts—two panes of equal size per page, four per spread—and minimalist backdrops likewise keep the focus where it belongs: on the adventure of taking the measure of everyday things, whether it be a tiny sea creature washed up by a wave or the words “I’m flying.” Ages 4-up. (Apr.)
—Publishers Weekly: Reviewed by Leonard S. Marcus
“Françoise Mouly, New Yorker art editor and wife of acclaimed cartoonist Art Spiegelman, is at it again. After transforming American comics with the seminal 1980s comics anthology RAW, Mouly is now out to teach kids to read by using comics.”
—Calvin Reid, Publishers Weekly
Silly Lilly Review
March 2008
“Lilly dances, skips, and jumps through the pages of this charming book...With its simple text and illustrations, this comic is perfect for new readers.”
—School Library Lournal
*
Booklist (starred review) for Otto's Orange Day
March 15, 2008
“Written by ‘60s underground comic guru Lynch and Eisner-nominated Cammuso, who also did the artwork, this book in the new TOON imprint gives emerging readers a high-quality comic that is both loads of fun and easy to read. It’s a simple, archetypal story: Otto, a little orange-loving cat, wishes “everything was orange,” but when a genie grants his wish, he realizes that he should have been more careful what he wished for: orange lamb chops . . . “Blaach!!!” This is a textbook example of how to use page composition, expanding panel size, color, and stylized figures to make sequential art fresh, energetic, and lively. With the particular pedigree of the book’s creators, however, one can’t help but miss the avant-garde subversiveness that made Little Lit books for older children so thrilling and unique. Even without that element, though, this book is sure to engage a new generation in the art form; kids will want to read it once, then return to it again and again.”
—Booklist (starred review) by Jesse Karp
Booklist Review for Silly Lilly and the Four Seasons
March 15, 2008
“Another successful entry in the new Toon imprint (see Benny and Penny and Otto’s Orange Day, also reviewed in this issue), this book is aimed at brand-new readers. Rosenstiehl follows Lilly (who appears to be three or four years old) as she undertakes simple, familiar activities through the seasons. In spring, she plays with her toy bear in the park; in summer, she’s off to the beach; in fall, she picks and eats apples; in winter, she plays in the snow. When spring returns, she soars on a swing. Lilly is bold and engaging in both her rounded, childlike appearance and her heartfelt approach to the real world and to her imagined one. The text is very brief (only a few words per panel), the colors are warm and bright, and the panels are large enough to draw in children new to books and reading. A good fit for the intended audience. ”
—Booklist Review — Francisca Goldsmith
“Lovingly produced and winsomely written.”
—Time Out New York Kids
“Here is a recipe for an appetizing collection of books that will be the perfect nutrition for your child’s hungry little mind.”
—Tony Medeiros, Sandbox World
“TOON Books are really a new generation of books for a new generation of young, emerging readers who are growing up in a very visual environment. These graphic novels are more than just stories translated into a comic format. They are organic, with simple dialogue and engaging illustrations created by some of the best writers and artists in the business…[TOON Books] help young readers as they begin the process of learning to navigate the page and decipher text.”
—Michele Gorman, author of Getting Graphic!
“IT’S ABOUT TIME! The comic format is so wonderful for early readers as the pictures support the text directly...This is the first time I’ve seen someone really trumpet the format for young readers.”
—Tracy Edmunds, All Ages Reads
“These books provide fun reading for younger children while also introducing them to the graphic novel format. They’re great for any library collection, and especially fine for school libraries.”
—Katherine Kan, MLS Librarian/Consultant
“Gather together some of the great graphic novelists of this new millennium and you get these easy reads in a fun, colorful format.”
—Elizabeth Bird, Donnell Central Children’s Room/NYPL
“What a breakthrough! Developing new readers through comics: only Françoise Mouly and Art Spiegelman could bring us something so ingenious. Some of us older readers will want to collect them for ourselves, too.”
—Mitchell Kaplan, Books and Books
“TOON Books are very confident in their comics format; reading them feels new yet also brings with it a notion of ‘Well, of course this is what chapter books for kids in comics form would look like.’”
—Tom Spurgeon, The Comics Reporter
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