Ingram Library Services’ Children and Teen Librarian newsletter surveys comics for children and young adults, making prominent mention of TOON Books among other recommended titles.
The April 2008 issue of Notes from the Horn Book, The Horn Book‘s new online newsletter, runs a short interview with TOON Books Editorial Director Françoise Mouly. In response to one question, Mouly differentiates between comics and picture books:
J. L. Bell quibbles with Mouly’s points on his Oz and Ends blog. “As the key features that differentiate comics from picture books, I emphasize the number of pictures on a page spread and the way comics ‘show the invisible’ through speech balloons, sound effects, and some other elements Mouly doesn’t mention, such as the motion and emotion lines,” Bell writes. However Bell ultimately concludes: “Of course, there’s no reason for families to choose one form or the other.” The Horn Book piece also links to a list of recommended comics assembled by that publication. In a piece for Comixology, Shaenon K. Garrity describes recurring plot structures in John Stanley‘s Little Lulu, currently being republished in a series of softcover volumes by Dark Horse. “No one absolutely needs more than one or two volumes of Little Lulu,” she writes. “And yet I’ve got 15 of them. Repetitive as they are, they’re just that good.” 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? 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.” 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.” |