Linkfest: Food for thought
Here’s your required reading for the day: At Thought Balloonists, Charles Hatfield has an extended meditation on the first three releases from Toon Books. Craig Fischer responds. Charles and Craig don’t just review the books, they talk about their place in the reading universe, how they function vis a vis other children’s books, and how a reader would relate to them. Good stuff. (Sample page from Otto’s Orange Day, by Frank Cammuso and Jay Lynch, swiped from the Toon Books website.)
Minx has put something new up on their website: tools for making your own comics. Go ahead, you know you want to.
Holly Black, author of The Spiderwick Chronicles, will be writing a series of graphic novels, entitled Kin, for Scholastic’s Graphix imprint, according to ICv2. Courtney Crumrin creator Ted Naifeh will illustrate the books, which will be hardback, full color, 144 pages, and sell for $16.99. The plot will revolve around Rue Silver, a character from Black’s The Good Neighbors, who is a “faerie” who must fight a dark fairy to regain her parents’ freedom. The first volume will be published in October.
Dave Ferraro reviews Joann Sfar’s Little Vampire at Comics-and-More.
Craig Fischer did at least tell about his daughter’s love for the Toon Books. This, to me, is KEY – the kids love them. If the kids don’t love them, then what is the point of publishing these books? And, in my opinion (after 25 years of working with children and teens), that is the most important aspect of these books. I think it’s a plus that the art in Benny and Penny brings to mind the work of Russell Hoban in the Frances the Badger books. I think too many reviewers in the comics world are looking at the books as adults. One needs to look at these books as a child to see how well they work.