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inspiration from vintage kids books and timeless modern graphic design Kristina Krogh
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Kristina Krogh is a Danish designer and artist based in Copenhagen. With a fascination toward organic textures, she creates chic geometric collages that explore the graphic rhythms found in nature. This can be seen in the way she layers wood, cork, stone, hair, and other materials into images that are dynamic and brilliantly balanced. Many of these attributes will be displayed in a new line of home accessories she will be launching this summer.
**David received the Sebastian Walker award for most promising children's illustrator 2015 after graduating from the Cambridge School of Art Children's Book Illustration Master programme.**
Unwrapping some fantastic illustrations...
About the book...
Ok this is one of those books that when you thumb through the illustrations you just want to give it a hug. It is delightful in all respects. The animals portrayed are so friendly and loveable and the little boy character just steals your heart away.
This book has the making of a classic and children will delight in trying to find the baby elephant as he plays a game of hide and seek. You have to look hard for him because .... "He is very good." He hides under blankets, on top of the bed (not under as one traditionally would do), disguises himself as a lamp with a lampshade over his head, stuffs himself inside the garden shed and even becomes invisible behind a tree (or is he?), just to name a few. He tricks the boy every time with his disappearing act until voilà, he magically appears right out of thin air again.
"There you are!" exclaims the little boy with a big grin on his face.
Equally amusing to track are the boy's expressive pet dog and the sluggish slow tortoise (or is he?), that are depicted brilliantly in the story.
Why the book was chosen by the publisher Gecko Press:
"This book tickles the funny bone of children and adults equally. Part of the humour comes through the juxtaposition of the subdued, beautiful illustrations and the absurdity of an elephant trying to hide inside a standard lamp." - Julia Marshall, Publisher
I love when a book comes along that when you pick it up to share you know that it is a winner. The illustrations, the font, the colour pallet, the whole vibe of the book oozes success. I highly recommend it with a 5 hug ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) endorsement. Enjoy!
About the author/illustrator...
David has been a shelf-stacker, a library assistant, a call-centre worker, a civil servant and a printer, so obviously it was only a matter of time before he tried his hand at writing and illustrating children’s books. He joined the world-renowned Children’s Book Illustration MA at Anglia Ruskin CSA. It turns out he actually found it a lot harder than all of the above, but ultimately a lot more rewarding.
Whilst on the course, David created his first picture book, Have You Seen Elephant?, which is due to be published in October 2015. He also won the Sebastian Walker award for new talent in children’s book illustration at his 2015 degree show.
David is now in the process of developing more picture books for UK publishers. He lives in Kettering with his toughest critics: partner Jo, son Teddy and cat Sofia.
I put hours of work finding the best kid's books to review for you each day. If you enjoy visiting Storywraps and would like to donate something for my time and effort I would greatly appreciate it.
Go to the top of my blog on the right hand corner (above my photo) and please donate what you feel lead to give. The amount you donate and the frequency you donate is totally up to you. I thank you in advance for your support. I love what I do and appreciate any amount that you may give so I can make our Storywrap's community even better. Thanks a million!
Read on and read always!
It's a wrap.
0 Comments on Have you seen Elephant? - a bookwrap as of 1/1/1900
We are always excited to hear about unique ways in which our books are being used, and were thrilled to come across this review of Under the Mesquite that outlines how to use the book in a very special way: to help medical students gain cultural awareness and insight into the experiences of patients from different backgrounds. Author Mark Kuczewski kindly gave us permission to cross-post this review from the Reflective MedEd blog.
Helping medical students to gain cultural awareness and insight into the experience of patients and families from backgrounds different than their own is no small task. And the search for poignant materials that are easily fit within the demanding environment of a medical school curriculum is never-ending. The good news is that I can unequivocally recommend Under the Mesquiteby Guadalupe Garcia McCall (Lee & Low Books, 2011). This narrative will help students to gain insight into the meaning of illness within families, especially within the context of a particular contemporary newly-arrived Mexican-American family…
The author, known as “Lupita” within the story, recounts experiences from her high school years when her mother suffered from cancer and underwent extensive treatment, sometimes for long periods at a medical center far from home. Because the author’s father accompanies his wife on these journeys, Lupita, the oldest daughter, takes on responsibility for the family. We are treated to her perspective in coping with her mother’s illness from spy work to find out the secreto that the adults guard in their hushed whispers to the difficulties that come when her parents are away such as being unable to keep order among her siblings. Lupita paints a portrait of a prudent family that begins a savings account with the birth of each child but whose resources are exhausted by the medical bills leaving her struggling each day to procure food to put on the table. And we come to know the importance of the arts, acting in school plays and writing in journals, as means to channel her anxieties and craft something beautiful.
Of course, the particular flavor of the narrative comes from the perspective of one who has significant roots on both sides of the border. She simultaneously gives us a window into the challenges of growing up bicultural and navigating the conflicting demands of loyalty to la familia that nurtured her and pursuing the dream of achieving a different kind of life that is available in the new world. The author lets us taste the bittersweet nature of this ambivalence both in her day-to-day growth as she is accused by her adolescent peers of trying to be something she is not as she loses her accent and in the more profound and cyclical heartbreak of separation. She relates her grief at abandoning her precious sunflowers when her father uproots her from her familiar home in Mexico and she in turn must break his heart as she heads off to college to pursue her dreams.
In sum, this book is among the most usable I’ve found with medical students for two reasons. First, it meets the main requirement of being an enjoyable and quick read. This autobiographical account is most likely to be devoured within a single day. The author is a superb writer and some of our medical students repeatedly commented that they wish she said more in most passages. Second, she enables us to easily identify with her struggles. Because all adults were once adolescents, we have a framework regarding the struggle for self-discovery and identity into which her cultural context is infused. She enables us to access the different through the familiar. Guadalupe Garcia McCall is a first-rate guide and mentor to those of us who seek insight into the Mexican-American experience and the particular strengths and means of coping that a family steeped in this hybrid culture might possess.
Mark G. Kuczewski, PhD, is the Chair of the Department of Medical Education and the Director of the Neiswanger Institute for Bioethics at the Loyola University Chicago Stritch School of Medicine.
Purchase Under the Mesquite by Guadalupe Garcia McCall here.
This past Easter marked the 100th anniversary of the Easter Rising, an armed uprising by Irish rebels against British rule in 1916. An insurrection that lasted almost a week, the Easter Rising began as a small rebellion on Easter Sunday and turned into a full uprising by Easter Monday, 24 April 1916. Rebels seized prominent buildings in the city of Dublin, took up arms against British troops, and declared Ireland as a republic and independent from the United Kingdom. However, the rebels were quickly overpowered and surrendered. Although the uprising had little Irish support at first, the execution of rebellion leaders transformed public opinion about British rule and as a result, became a turning point during Ireland’s struggle for independence.
Featured image credit: The shell of the G.P.O. on Sackville Street (later O’Connell Street), Dublin in the aftermath of the 1916 Rising. Date: May? 1916 NLI Ref.: Ke 121. Photo by Keogh Brothers Ltd., photographers. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.
I just read a review of the book Withering-by-Sea by Judith Rossell and put it on my to-read list. (That list is so long, I will need a prolonged convalescence to ever get through it all - or possibly a life of leisure.) And then I find this!!!
Much like Warner Bros is spreading the DC Universe on a number of different networks, Disney and Marvel Television look to be doing the same with some of their characters on the fringe. Today, Freeform (formerly known as ABC Family) has announced a greenlight for a Cloak and Dagger series per Variety. Given the romantic […]
0 Comments on Cloak and Dagger come to television on ABC’s Freeform as of 4/7/2016 10:36:00 PM
Rejection, reviews, competition, disappointment, deadlines, and doubt. There is no shortage of adversity in the writing life, making the ability to bounce back one of the greatest skills a writer can foster. And it can be fostered.
Because resilience is not a genetic or personality trait, but a process which can be learned and practiced. Overcoming the challenges that exist in our writing lives often feels difficult because it is difficult.
Really.
Really.
Difficult.
But not impossible.
And if you don’t believe me—Jennifer Mann—perhaps you’d believe another Jennifer?
Have patience.
“There are those writing days where I feel more alive than I can almost handle. And then there are the days of all out despair where I worry I’ll never have success again. If I have patience with myself, I get that exhilarating feeling all over again, and it keeps me going.”
“A big part of surviving in this business is managing my own negative emotions. That means I protect my mind and my heart fiercely. I do whatever I need to do to stay in a healthy place, because I've realized that I'm no good to anyone when I've let a bad review or my own natural writing insecurities get the better of me.”
“Not only do real-life experiences and relationships inform and inspire your art, these will be there for you on days when the writing world is difficult or frustrating or just plain hurts your feelings.”
“We can’t get better or grow if there is no reason to. Obstacles, like critique, rejection, time constraints, tech failures, family obligations, power outages, chocolate shortages, give us a reason to change how we do things, and every time we do something differently, we grow.”
“I remind myself that it is just a book. Sure, authors can impact, and maybe even save, lives when their stories reach the right person at the right time, but possibly not as many lives as, say, heart surgeons or the inventors of airbags... and I sometimes need the reminder to just get over myself and put things in perspective!”
“I sit at my computer and imagine myself with those blinders you see on horses.
"This helps me shut out the world and disconnect from negative distractions. It refocuses me on what matters most, the writing, and reminds me this is what deserves my time and energy.”
If You Love Honey by Martha Sullivan, published by Dawn Publications
Here's my RABBIT contribution for April's blog. This is a spread from If You Love Honey by Martha Sullivan. You can see more illustrations from this book and others at my Studio With A View Blog.
Creativity, critical thinking, communication and collaboration are critical skills for children to learn so they can succeed in today’s world.
Use the books below and the guided questions to teach these concepts found in each story.
You’ll find a well-known fable told from another culture’s perspective, an inspiring tale about a family working together and the true story of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade. To view all the books chosen and to see all the tips and activities suggested for each book, visit the Learn for Life section.
When sisters Shang, Tao and Paotze get a surprise visitor while their mother is away, they have to figure out if it’s really their Po Po (grandmother) who is at the door.
Lon Po Po is about critical thinking and how you can use lots of clues to figure out a problem. Use these questions and ideas to get your child thinking and talking about the story:
What clues did the sisters have to figure out
The sisters tricked the wolf. Do you think it was right or wrong to trick the wolf? Why or why not? Have you ever tricked someone? What happened?
Home At Last written by Susan Middleton Elya, illustrated by Felipe Davalos
The Patiño family moves to the U.S. from Mexico and must learn to speak English and adapt to their new country. Despite some challenges, Ana’s family finds ways to support and encourage one another as they build a new life together.
Home at Last is about communicating and how being able to clearly share your thoughts and needs with others is important to feeling connected. Use these questions and ideas to get your child thinking and talking about the story.
Ana and her family learn English when they move to America. Tell me about a time when you learned something new. What happened? How did you feel?
Why do you think Mamá doesn’t want to learn English? How did she change her mind?
This real-life story shares the life of Tony Sarg, the talented puppet-maker who helped the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade come to life.
Balloons Over Broadway is about using CREATIVITY to build on existing ideas to make something new and different. Use these questions and ideas to get your child thinking and talking about the story.
What are some different ways Tony uses his creativity in the story?
Tony is always looking at his balloons and making changes so that they work better. Why was it important that he kept improving the balloons? How do you think about making something better?
Developed as a joint project with the Partnership for 21st Century Learning and with generous support from Disney, each hand-picked book in the Learn for Life section is paired with a FREE downloadable tip sheet. These tipsheets designed to help you equip the kids you serve with the key 21st century skills they need to thrive in school and in life.
The audience migration from monthly comics to graphic novels (tpbs, if you prefer) has always been a fairly contentious thing. There’s not a lot of point in denying that the book format is continuing to make gains and a lot of new readers prefer it. When Paul Levitz writes about graphic novels being “a clear majority of sales,” it’s probably time for a wider range of people give up the ghost and talk about that format as an end game.
10 Comments on It’s Time To Rethink About How Graphic Novels Are Read, last added: 4/7/2016
Great piece! Salient points, particularly about release cycles and crossovers. I’ve always thought crossovers are ultimately more detrimental to the format than anything else the Big Two does. I get WHY they do them– they sell. However, in the long term crossovers are generally just bumps you have to grind through when they bleed into random characters’ runs. It’s like having ten minutes of Transformers spliced into your Harry Potter book.
I do wonder about sagas though. When it comes to series, I prefer big long meaty adventures to self-contained stories. Volume ones are important because they establish a tone for the series. After six issues, you’ll generally have a sense of whether or not you want to keep following these characters stories’, at which point it really doesn’t matter whether the stories are self-contained or not. You love the characters and that’s what matters, which means that a good plot that spans multiple volumes is a delicious gravy on top of the characters which are the mashed potatoes– and who doesn’t like gravy on their mashed potatoes?
I suppose the argument falters when you consider books like Sandman, which was a little lackluster until issue 7 in WSQ, but series like that tend to be older. People understand the importance of the first volume now and rightfully give it the full attention it deserves. If they don’t, it’s time to start!
Robert Spina said, on 4/7/2016 7:59:00 AM
I’d settle for a consistent numbering system.
Torsten Adair said, on 4/7/2016 8:46:00 AM
First problem: superhero comics, thanks to the Levitz Paradigm, are soap operas.
It’s a neverending story.
Like television soap operas, readers rarely read the previous issues/episodes/volumes.
There’s little incentive to keep volumes in print, UNLESS it’s one creator with a good backlist (Morrison’s JLA) or a saga within a series (Snyder’s Batman, Bendis’ Ultimate Spider-Man).
The best thing about superhero comics, IF they follow Shooter’s Imperative, is that it’s easy for a first-time reader to dive into a story with each issue/chapter. Yes, it gets clunky, but just like Dick Tracy, you can edit out the recap panels/pages in the collection.
Sagas… do sell. It’s not hard to dive into the older volumes. Costly? Maybe.
I had a lot of kid customers who discovered the Scholastic Bone volumes in color, and not willing to wait for the next volume to be printed, bought the paperback omnibus.
No omnibus? Buy the single volumes. (Yes, this happens. Ultimate Spider-Man, almost every popular manga series, even Sandman back in the day.) Can’t afford it? Visit the library.
Does a change in artist affect the story?
I don’t think so. The entire Death and Return of Superman epic proves this. Remember, in the 1990s, all five Superman titles were interlinked, denoted by a triangle on the cover telling you which weekly chapter it was.
Sandman is the standard in how to take a monthly series with a variety of storytelling formats, and collect them into volumes.
It’s got story arcs, containing lots of weird stuff. (Thankfully, each arc starts from scratch, with Morpheus appearing later.) There are single issues. There are arcs which reference previous stories and characters.
DC/Vertigo packaged them perfectly.
What’s the difference between picking up the previous seven volumes (work) and picking up an omnibus containing the same seven volumes (enjoyment)?
As for publishing schedules, DC is pretty quick about collecting titles.
They have already announced the Rebirth omnibus for next Fall, as well as some series which are just starting.
Martian Manhunter #6 = November 2015, GN (#1-6) = March 2016
A better model for DC:
Schedule a new series.
Give it six issues.
Judge sales, critical response.
If it sells, continue with another six issues.
If it doesn’t sell, end the series, and sell the trade.
If the trade sells well, then restart the series.
There’s a HUGE market outside comics shops. Bookstores, schools, librariies… they cater to readers who don’t care or even realize that there was a monthly series. They just want to read a good story.
Sure, maybe you gain some fans who can’t wait for the collection, so they become comics readers. (See: Walking Dead) But generally, they’ll wait for the next volume and read something else in the meantime. (See: Harlequin’s numbered series, each aimed at a specific demographic like ranchers, NASCAR, and single mothers.)
I see a shift to digital monthlies. Easy to read, cheaper to produce and distribute.
Mathieu Doublet said, on 4/7/2016 10:21:00 AM
A lot of nice arguments.
I wouldn’t agree on sagas, though. It looks like if a saga is already at volume 8, it would be frightning for new readers. Well the point of TPBs is that it’s supposed to last and be there whether you want to read the book 1, 6 or 12 months later. So retailers should point to volume 1 and hope that the hook catches. And if (s)he likes the title, this new reader knows that there’s a lot more going on. :)
I would add that there’s something I like a lot when I read a TPB or Omnibus, it’s the opening page. Marvel has done quite nicely some times and then stopped from writing a text one or two pages long that sums up nicely where things are. I really prefer that to a foreword by someone else than the actual book’s writer. There should be more of that, especially in the ever-changing-world of Marvel / DC super-heroes.
Brian Hibbs said, on 4/7/2016 11:50:00 AM
Quick thought from paragraph one: while DOLLARS for GNs are certainly higher than periodicals, I largely doubt that it is true if we’re talking about number of readers.
JJ Miller’s Comics Chronicles says Diamond was ~98 million pieces of comics sold in 2015. 2015 BookScan (for everything, every down in the long tail) was about 15.3m copies.
I know that I can almost always sell far far far more copies of a periodical than I will of a book of the same material. To make a super-reductive argument, we sold about 30 copies of BLACK PANTHER #1 *yesterday*, whereas our best selling GN in the last month (PATIENCE) hasn’t sold that many copies in an entire month.
Frankly, I think the real argument is to serialize MORE. Can you *imagine* what a periodical comic that serialized, say, the next five GNs from Scholastic (with a Raina story in the lead) might be able to sell?
-B
Glenn Simpson said, on 4/7/2016 12:20:00 PM
Here’s my crazy idea. Bear with me.
So let’s assume that the goal is to sell more/better graphic novels. That that is the end product. So the writer has a 100page book in mind, and that’s what they are going to create.
The problem: the publisher can’t afford to pay him for 100 pages while not getting any revenue along the way.
The weird solution: Release the book in 20-page increments along the way.
But, you ask, how is this different from what they do now? The answer is that no real serious attempt is made to give a complete story in those 20 pages. Heck, page 20 could be the middle of a conversation. Other than making sure a 2-page spread isn’t interrupted, the writer/artist just do their 100 page book.
The idea is that no, each bit isn’t necessarily a complete story or chapter to itself with a satisfying resolution or whatever, but it IS something you can buy along the way to get the story faster, if you don’t want to wait for the final 100 pages.
Might be crazy, but it seems like it might work.
MBunge said, on 4/7/2016 1:05:00 PM
“The guilt trip that trade-waiters get books cancelled no longer flies. It’s a valid format or you wouldn’t be seeing original graphic novels coming out from the Big Two.”
Trades and Graphic Novels are not the same thing. Trades do not exist without monthly comics.
THEY.
DO.
NOT.
EXIST.
Focusing on changes to monthly comics, which certainly need a bunch, to benefit trades is like focusing on changes to the way new clothes are made in order to benefit the people who shop at Goodwill.
This is not semantics. Original Graphic Novels usually cost more for less content and sell worse than trades. I believe only two of the Top 50 “GN” sellers in February were actual graphic novels and one of those was a new edition of “The Killing Joke,” which originally came out in 1988 for pete’s sake!
This is important because most of the changes you could make to improve monthly comics as monthly comics would actually hurt them as trades, and most of the changes you could make to monthly comics to improve trades would actually further harm monthly comics. What could or show happen with Original Graphic Novels really has nothing to do with either.
Mike
MBunge said, on 4/7/2016 1:06:00 PM
“should happen” instead of “show happen.” Damn you lack of edit function!
Joseph said, on 4/7/2016 3:51:00 PM
“There are too many comics where you don’t get much actual _story_ in a single issue and it can be even worse with first issues.”
But this is already, at least in many ways, a reaction to TPBs, i.e. Writing for Trades. So it becomes a bit of a circular argument, totally tautological. This in part stems from the success of Graphic Novels in the 80s, but more importantly it’s an effect of a willful conflation of comic books with GNs. That is to say that the industry embraced the term to try to elevate the product, culturally, to climb out of the ghetto that was created in the move from ephemerality ( the newsstand, the Sunday paper) to the direct market ( namely the founding of LCBS to respond to the niche market that has been cultivated by decades of tradition and the emergence of an underground of publishers and readers.)
The danger here is in not recognizing, I would argue, the inherently serial nature of the medium. Often for practical reasons, as an artist can only produce so many pages. Some series operated serially for decades with no continuity (e.g. Archie) while others function as a saga (as is argued here). Most comic books, especially superhero books, are closer to soap operas, as there’s no telos, no guiding goal or end. And that’s fine, life is generally like this as well. Series with an end in mind (Y, Chew, Scalped, the Unwritten, etc) are hard to separate from a comics market that knows they’re already planned to be released in a trade, collected as a finished set. So if we want to talk about comics as a medium, it seems to me we at least have to think seriously about what it means to read serially, and so “seriality” is the main concept missing from this discussion.
George said, on 4/7/2016 4:41:00 PM
“Like television soap operas, readers rarely read the previous issues/episodes/volumes.”
Really? When I was a superhero addict (a time that is admittedly 20 years in the past), catching up on episodes I’d missed — through back issues or reprints — was one of the genre’s big appeals. It was that way for all the superhero fans I knew. Maybe that doesn’t exist among today’s readers. Maybe they only care about the here and now.
Sarah Laurence, who posts beautiful images from her coastal-Maine life and wide imagination on her popular blog, has been so kind to me in my journey as a young adult novelist. Asking for and reading the books, thinking about them, making powerful and important observations, introducing me to her friend, Cathy Fiebach, of Main Point Books in Bryn Mawr, PA, where I'll be doing the first area signing ofthe book featured aboveat 2 PM on April 30.
This is what Sarah does for others' books—even as she writes her own.
In the quiet months leading up to the launch (this coming Tuesday) of This Is the Story of You, Sarah asked for a copy. Yesterday she shared her thoughts.
I hope she knows how much this means to me.
I'm sharing just a fragment of Sarah's Story post here, so that you'll be forced to read the rest on Sarah's blog itself. I hope you stay there for awhile, and poke around to see what else Sarah has to say about words, stories, and place.
This is a Story of You is a modern parable of the horrors of climate change. When a storm cuts off an island from the Jersey Shore, 17-year-old Mira must fight for survival with only a stray cat for company. Earlier that day, her single mom had driven her disabled brother to the mainland hospital for emergency treatment. As the storm rages and the sea floods their beachside cottage, Mira must decide what to save and how to stay alive. If that weren't scary enough, a mysterious intruder is lurking outside, and without power or cellular service, Mira can't call for help.
0 Comments on Sarah Laurence reflects (so kindly) on THIS IS THE STORY OF YOU as of 1/1/1900
Well that was a heck of a day for Image Expo. The return of the Batgirl of Burnside team with motorcycles, and of the award-winning Azzarello/Risso team with Moonshine were big, but the appearance of Karen Berger brought down Twitter, and I'm sure, the house in Seattle. Berger is a genuine comics legend, and while editing one book is just a smallish thing, just having her back on deck feels right somehow. It's worth noting that SURGEON X, the book she's editing, written by Sara Kenney, is funded by a grant from Society Award from Wellcome Trust; perhaps the charitable nature of the project helped lure her to the Image Expo stage.
3 Comments on All the new titles from Image Expo with more art and quotes, last added: 4/8/2016
So many of these sound/look great – fantastic concepts, proven creative teams. I think a lot of it’s all going to come down to cover price when it’s time to decide what gets picked up first run and what gets trade-waited.
There is ocean, storm, community, friendship, family, mystery in This Is the Story of You. There are model airplanes pinned to a ceiling and bobbing in the breeze.
There is this book, which will launch next Tuesday, April 12, and be featured in this weekend's Philadelphia Inquirer.
Yesterday afternoon, Hannah Moushabeck, Associate Marketing Manager at Chronicle, began to send me Story word from independent booksellers. Mired in memoir newsletter management and an odd strain of politics, I had not, in any way, expected this.
Next Hannah sent me two images. The one above. The one you're about to see.
What a glorious touch, I thought—this photo of the real book beside one of the figurative and metaphoric planes within its pages.
Thank you, Hannah. And thank you, booksellers. Their words below.
“What we lose, what we find, how we survive. Mira is alone when the storm hits her barrier-island town, with only a half-grown cat for company. The furor and devastation of the storm is horrible, but it is the aftermath, in the days before emergency help arrives, that is the most harrowing part: looking for loved ones; finding the dead; treating the wounded; finding food and water and shelter; and holding on to hope. The story of a huge storm and its impact on one small community, This is the Story of You is shot through with the gorgeous lyricism of Kephart's writing.” —Nancy Banks, Bookseller, City Stacks Books and Coffee
“Beth Kephart has written a lyrical novel where it is as easy to get lost in the language as the story. As often occurs in YA novels, Mira Bunal, is forced to face the worst on her own when a storm like Sandy hits the NJ island she lives on while her brother is receiving a treatment for a serious congenital illness. Mira finds the strength she needs and help in places she doesn't expect it. A great read for both teens and adults --that you might not want to read while summering at the Jersey shore.” —Cathy Fiebach, Bookseller, Main Point Books “To pay attention, to love the world, to live beyond ourselves." This is what they learned living as year-rounders on the 6 mile long 1/2 mile wide vacationers paradise of Haven. This gripping, powerful YA novel is the story of family and friendship, of learning and learning more, of place and tragedy and resilience. It is the perfect summer read, but This is the Story of You will linger long after the last page is turned. —Angie Tally, Bookseller, The Country Bookshop “Beautifully written, This is the Story of You follows the life of Mira Banul, a year-rounder living on Haven, a six mile by one-half mile island. Year-rounders are prepared for everything so when news of a giant storm blowing in reaches the island, they think nothing of it. But the storm is like nothing they've ever seen before, and when her family is stuck on the mainland and one of her closest friends is missing, Mira must learn how to cope with loss and rekindle her hope if she is to help the island recover. With new mysteries popping up every chapter, This Is The Story of You is impossible to put down.” — Marya Johnston, Bookseller, Out West Books
0 Comments on the booksellers' kind words about THIS IS THE STORY OF YOU as of 1/1/1900
Question: How exactly does one make a plot twist? It's my first time to write a story and I'd like to make a plot twist, how can I? Answer: The essence
Most entries to the Eurovision song contest are frothy pop tunes, but this year’s contribution from Ukraine addresses Stalin’s deportation of the entire Tatar population of Crimea in May 1944. It may seem an odd choice, but is actually very timely if we dig a little into the history of mass repression and inter-ethnic tensions in the region. Almost a quarter of a million Tatars, an ethnically Turkic people indigenous to the Crimea, were moved en masse to Soviet Central Asia as a collective punishment for perceived collaboration with the Nazis.
Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, directed by Gareth Edwards, is the first of the Star Wars spin-off stories that will be released between “proper” episodes of the series. This first one, as you surely already know, centers on the Rebel attempt to steal the plans for the Death Star. Felicity Jones looks to be […]
3 Comments on The first teaser for ROGUE ONE: A STAR WARS STORY brings you back to the original trilogy, last added: 4/9/2016
Still just Disney rip off. Stick to the original EU instead.
George said, on 4/7/2016 2:45:00 PM
Looks very much aimed at the Twilight/Hunger Games/Insurgent teen girl audience. But I’ll probably see it anyway.
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विश्व स्वास्थ्य दिवस और हमारा खानपान हम अपने खान पान को लेकर जरा भी सजग नही है. महिलाओं मे खून की कमी होती जा रही है पर शरीर फूलता जा रहा है.. बच्चे कुपोषण के शिकार होते जा रहे है और युवा नशे की लत से अपना स्वास्थय खराब कर रहे हैं … मैं अपनी […]
Richard Causton’s studies took him from the University of York via the Royal College of Music and the Scuola Civica in Milan, to King’s College, Cambridge where he is Lecturer in Composition. In addition to composition, Causton writes and lectures on Italian contemporary music and regularly broadcasts for Italian radio. In our occasional series, in which we ask Oxford composers questions based around their musical likes and dislikes, influences, and challenges, we spoke with Richard Causton about his writing, new music, and his desert island playlist.
This week JJ and Kelly talk about the characterization of protagonists, how to get a vivid, realistic character, and whether or not “unlikeable” means “unsympathetic.”
Subscribe to us on iTunes, Stitcher, Soundcloud, or use this feed to subscribe through your podcast service of choice! If you like us, please, please, please leave a rating or review, as it helps other listeners find the podcast. We cherish each and every one of you who have taken the time to leave us feedback; you’re the stars in our sky!
Show Notes/Further Reading
Characters need a balance of flaws and strengths.
Universal appeal is not possible—it generally means the character becomes incredibly bland.
Specificity breeds intimacy, and specific action shows more than telling details.
There is a difference between an “unlikeable” and an “unsympathetic” protagonist. An unlikeable protagonist can still be sympathetic, but an unsympathetic character just makes us not care.
JJ is working on Wintersong copyedits and she has a cover! The cover will be revealed on Monday, April 11, but those who are subscribed to JJ’s newsletter will get to see it first!
That’s all for this week! Next week we will be continuing our characterization series with an episode about VILLAINS. As always, if you have any questions, sound off in the comments!
I don’t know why, but for some reason when I think of the word FLEXIBILITY it amuses me. Before I had children, 21 and 18 years ago, I have to readily admit I was not a flexible individual. You would think by getting married 27 years ago, flexibility would have been easy for me, nope not for me. Even at the young age of 22, when I married I was very set in my ways. It was basically, my way or the highway. Thankfully my husband has always been a go with the flow flexible person. Over the years though, I’ve learned to relax more and more and to go with the flow… hence creating flexibility in my life without even realizing it. My epiphany to this new found flexibility? I’ve learned there is more than one way to do things and to think outside the box is much more exciting rather than staying the narrow minded course of my way or the highway.
What do you do to stay flexible and more enjoyable to be around?
Looking forward to hearing about your tips! Thanks for visiting!
Dee and Deb Off They Go Kindergarten First Day Jitters ~ December 2015 ~ Guardian Angel Publishing, Inc. ~ 2016 Story Monster Approved A Sandy Grave ~ January 2014 ~ Guardian Angel Publishing, Inc. ~ 2014 Purple Dragonfly 1st Place Picture Books 6+, Story Monster Approved, Beach Book Festival Honorable Mention 2014, Reader's Favorite Five Star Review Powder Monkey ~ May 2013 ~ Guardian Angel Publishing, Inc. ~ 2015 Purple Dragonfly Book Award Historical Fiction 1st Place, Story Monster Approved and Reader's Favorite Five Star Review Hockey Agony ~ January 2013 ~ Guardian Angel Publishing, Inc. ~ 2015 Purple Dragonfly Book Award Honorable Mention Picture Books 6+, New England Book Festival Honorable Mention 2014, Story Monster Approved and Reader's Favorite Five Star Review The Golden Pathway ~ August 2010 ~ Guardian Angel Publishing, Inc. ~ Literary Classics Silver Award and Seal of Approval, Readers Favorite 2012 International Book Awards Honorable Mention and Dan Poynter's Global e-Book Awards Finalist
0 Comments on F is for Flexibility - #atozchallenge as of 1/1/1900
This year, our class motto has been "Push through the struggle." Originally a mantra of one student, but quickly became the motto of the community. These are the words used to encourage each other to persevere in all learning tasks. The Slice Of Life Story Challenge was no exception!
e ways in which our books are being used, and were thrilled to come across this review of 
Much like Warner Bros is spreading the DC Universe on a number of different networks, Disney and Marvel Television look to be doing the same with some of their characters on the fringe. Today, Freeform (formerly known as ABC Family) has announced a greenlight for a Cloak and Dagger series per Variety. Given the romantic […]
The audience migration from monthly comics to graphic novels (tpbs, if you prefer) has always been a fairly contentious thing. There’s not a lot of point in denying that the book format is continuing to make gains and a lot of new readers prefer it. When Paul Levitz writes about graphic novels being “a clear majority of sales,” it’s probably time for a wider range of people give up the ghost and talk about that format as an end game.
Well that was a heck of a day for Image Expo. The return of the Batgirl of Burnside team with motorcycles, and of the award-winning Azzarello/Risso team with Moonshine were big, but the appearance of Karen Berger brought down Twitter, and I'm sure, the house in Seattle. Berger is a genuine comics legend, and while editing one book is just a smallish thing, just having her back on deck feels right somehow. It's worth noting that SURGEON X, the book she's editing, written by Sara Kenney, is funded by a grant from Society Award from Wellcome Trust; perhaps the charitable nature of the project helped lure her to the Image Expo stage.
Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, directed by Gareth Edwards, is the first of the Star Wars spin-off stories that will be released between “proper” episodes of the series. This first one, as you surely already know, centers on the Rebel attempt to steal the plans for the Death Star. Felicity Jones looks to be […]
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Great piece! Salient points, particularly about release cycles and crossovers. I’ve always thought crossovers are ultimately more detrimental to the format than anything else the Big Two does. I get WHY they do them– they sell. However, in the long term crossovers are generally just bumps you have to grind through when they bleed into random characters’ runs. It’s like having ten minutes of Transformers spliced into your Harry Potter book.
I do wonder about sagas though. When it comes to series, I prefer big long meaty adventures to self-contained stories. Volume ones are important because they establish a tone for the series. After six issues, you’ll generally have a sense of whether or not you want to keep following these characters stories’, at which point it really doesn’t matter whether the stories are self-contained or not. You love the characters and that’s what matters, which means that a good plot that spans multiple volumes is a delicious gravy on top of the characters which are the mashed potatoes– and who doesn’t like gravy on their mashed potatoes?
I suppose the argument falters when you consider books like Sandman, which was a little lackluster until issue 7 in WSQ, but series like that tend to be older. People understand the importance of the first volume now and rightfully give it the full attention it deserves. If they don’t, it’s time to start!
I’d settle for a consistent numbering system.
First problem: superhero comics, thanks to the Levitz Paradigm, are soap operas.
It’s a neverending story.
Like television soap operas, readers rarely read the previous issues/episodes/volumes.
There’s little incentive to keep volumes in print, UNLESS it’s one creator with a good backlist (Morrison’s JLA) or a saga within a series (Snyder’s Batman, Bendis’ Ultimate Spider-Man).
The best thing about superhero comics, IF they follow Shooter’s Imperative, is that it’s easy for a first-time reader to dive into a story with each issue/chapter. Yes, it gets clunky, but just like Dick Tracy, you can edit out the recap panels/pages in the collection.
Sagas… do sell. It’s not hard to dive into the older volumes. Costly? Maybe.
I had a lot of kid customers who discovered the Scholastic Bone volumes in color, and not willing to wait for the next volume to be printed, bought the paperback omnibus.
No omnibus? Buy the single volumes. (Yes, this happens. Ultimate Spider-Man, almost every popular manga series, even Sandman back in the day.) Can’t afford it? Visit the library.
Does a change in artist affect the story?
I don’t think so. The entire Death and Return of Superman epic proves this. Remember, in the 1990s, all five Superman titles were interlinked, denoted by a triangle on the cover telling you which weekly chapter it was.
Sandman is the standard in how to take a monthly series with a variety of storytelling formats, and collect them into volumes.
It’s got story arcs, containing lots of weird stuff. (Thankfully, each arc starts from scratch, with Morpheus appearing later.) There are single issues. There are arcs which reference previous stories and characters.
DC/Vertigo packaged them perfectly.
What’s the difference between picking up the previous seven volumes (work) and picking up an omnibus containing the same seven volumes (enjoyment)?
As for publishing schedules, DC is pretty quick about collecting titles.
They have already announced the Rebirth omnibus for next Fall, as well as some series which are just starting.
Martian Manhunter #6 = November 2015, GN (#1-6) = March 2016
A better model for DC:
Schedule a new series.
Give it six issues.
Judge sales, critical response.
If it sells, continue with another six issues.
If it doesn’t sell, end the series, and sell the trade.
If the trade sells well, then restart the series.
There’s a HUGE market outside comics shops. Bookstores, schools, librariies… they cater to readers who don’t care or even realize that there was a monthly series. They just want to read a good story.
Sure, maybe you gain some fans who can’t wait for the collection, so they become comics readers. (See: Walking Dead) But generally, they’ll wait for the next volume and read something else in the meantime. (See: Harlequin’s numbered series, each aimed at a specific demographic like ranchers, NASCAR, and single mothers.)
I see a shift to digital monthlies. Easy to read, cheaper to produce and distribute.
A lot of nice arguments.
I wouldn’t agree on sagas, though. It looks like if a saga is already at volume 8, it would be frightning for new readers. Well the point of TPBs is that it’s supposed to last and be there whether you want to read the book 1, 6 or 12 months later. So retailers should point to volume 1 and hope that the hook catches. And if (s)he likes the title, this new reader knows that there’s a lot more going on. :)
I would add that there’s something I like a lot when I read a TPB or Omnibus, it’s the opening page. Marvel has done quite nicely some times and then stopped from writing a text one or two pages long that sums up nicely where things are. I really prefer that to a foreword by someone else than the actual book’s writer. There should be more of that, especially in the ever-changing-world of Marvel / DC super-heroes.
Quick thought from paragraph one: while DOLLARS for GNs are certainly higher than periodicals, I largely doubt that it is true if we’re talking about number of readers.
JJ Miller’s Comics Chronicles says Diamond was ~98 million pieces of comics sold in 2015. 2015 BookScan (for everything, every down in the long tail) was about 15.3m copies.
I know that I can almost always sell far far far more copies of a periodical than I will of a book of the same material. To make a super-reductive argument, we sold about 30 copies of BLACK PANTHER #1 *yesterday*, whereas our best selling GN in the last month (PATIENCE) hasn’t sold that many copies in an entire month.
Frankly, I think the real argument is to serialize MORE. Can you *imagine* what a periodical comic that serialized, say, the next five GNs from Scholastic (with a Raina story in the lead) might be able to sell?
-B
Here’s my crazy idea. Bear with me.
So let’s assume that the goal is to sell more/better graphic novels. That that is the end product. So the writer has a 100page book in mind, and that’s what they are going to create.
The problem: the publisher can’t afford to pay him for 100 pages while not getting any revenue along the way.
The weird solution: Release the book in 20-page increments along the way.
But, you ask, how is this different from what they do now? The answer is that no real serious attempt is made to give a complete story in those 20 pages. Heck, page 20 could be the middle of a conversation. Other than making sure a 2-page spread isn’t interrupted, the writer/artist just do their 100 page book.
The idea is that no, each bit isn’t necessarily a complete story or chapter to itself with a satisfying resolution or whatever, but it IS something you can buy along the way to get the story faster, if you don’t want to wait for the final 100 pages.
Might be crazy, but it seems like it might work.
“The guilt trip that trade-waiters get books cancelled no longer flies. It’s a valid format or you wouldn’t be seeing original graphic novels coming out from the Big Two.”
Trades and Graphic Novels are not the same thing. Trades do not exist without monthly comics.
THEY.
DO.
NOT.
EXIST.
Focusing on changes to monthly comics, which certainly need a bunch, to benefit trades is like focusing on changes to the way new clothes are made in order to benefit the people who shop at Goodwill.
This is not semantics. Original Graphic Novels usually cost more for less content and sell worse than trades. I believe only two of the Top 50 “GN” sellers in February were actual graphic novels and one of those was a new edition of “The Killing Joke,” which originally came out in 1988 for pete’s sake!
This is important because most of the changes you could make to improve monthly comics as monthly comics would actually hurt them as trades, and most of the changes you could make to monthly comics to improve trades would actually further harm monthly comics. What could or show happen with Original Graphic Novels really has nothing to do with either.
Mike
“should happen” instead of “show happen.” Damn you lack of edit function!
“There are too many comics where you don’t get much actual _story_ in a single issue and it can be even worse with first issues.”
But this is already, at least in many ways, a reaction to TPBs, i.e. Writing for Trades. So it becomes a bit of a circular argument, totally tautological. This in part stems from the success of Graphic Novels in the 80s, but more importantly it’s an effect of a willful conflation of comic books with GNs. That is to say that the industry embraced the term to try to elevate the product, culturally, to climb out of the ghetto that was created in the move from ephemerality ( the newsstand, the Sunday paper) to the direct market ( namely the founding of LCBS to respond to the niche market that has been cultivated by decades of tradition and the emergence of an underground of publishers and readers.)
The danger here is in not recognizing, I would argue, the inherently serial nature of the medium. Often for practical reasons, as an artist can only produce so many pages. Some series operated serially for decades with no continuity (e.g. Archie) while others function as a saga (as is argued here). Most comic books, especially superhero books, are closer to soap operas, as there’s no telos, no guiding goal or end. And that’s fine, life is generally like this as well. Series with an end in mind (Y, Chew, Scalped, the Unwritten, etc) are hard to separate from a comics market that knows they’re already planned to be released in a trade, collected as a finished set. So if we want to talk about comics as a medium, it seems to me we at least have to think seriously about what it means to read serially, and so “seriality” is the main concept missing from this discussion.
“Like television soap operas, readers rarely read the previous issues/episodes/volumes.”
Really? When I was a superhero addict (a time that is admittedly 20 years in the past), catching up on episodes I’d missed — through back issues or reprints — was one of the genre’s big appeals. It was that way for all the superhero fans I knew. Maybe that doesn’t exist among today’s readers. Maybe they only care about the here and now.