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Writer/publisher Vera Greentea is shooting for her fifth successful Kickstarter comic book campaign. Since 2010 she has raised $22,601 and this time she’s trying to hit her $10,000 goal to fund her latest anthology, PAPA.
The expected release for this book is (American) Fathers Day. The money raised will go to the printing. PAPA is expected to be full color, 50 pages in standard comic book format. Vera’s previous projects have been accessible to all ages but PAPA is intended for a mature audience.  I suspect this might affect her and dissuade previous supporters, and grow a whole new audience.

Greentea has recruited some stellar talent this time around. I have participated in a successful Kickstarter anthologies where it’s very apparent that it’s the artist’s first printed work but we all have to start somewhere. The only artist I’m familiar with in this book is Lizzy John—I really enjoyed her run on Fraggle Rock, and it’s good to see her still behind the drawing board. It’s nice to see Vera taking a chance on working with other artist that could use the spotlight.

The stories will be illustrated by three insanely gifted artists that I discovered in some prodigy-ridden pocket universe. They are Ben Jelter (Sidius Nova, The Tumor); Lizzy John (Fraggle Rock) and Joseph Lacroix (Diablo).

Vera was kind enough to give me time from her busy publishing schedule to give us some insight on the success of her previous projects and what goes in to creating a successful Kickstarter project. Don’t forget to visit the project page and kick-in a few shekels and help this book see the light of day.

Henry Barajas: You and the artist, Laura Müller, really worked well together on NENETL— how did you two find each other and make this book come alive?

Vera Greentea: For every book I do, I look for a particular “feel” that might give the story a certain kind of atmosphere or flow. For Nenetl, I was looking for an artist that could draw movement. It took some time, but I was excited to find Laura’s art blog, her work is so incredibly dynamic and has a fantastic organic appeal to it. I contacted her and she replied almost immediately. It was clear we were enthusiastic about each other’s work, and I think that shows in the book and gives it so much life. She’s my Nenetl soulmate.

Dia De Los Muertos parade image from NENETL

Barajas:  NENETL revolved around Hispanic culture. What got you interested and what kind of research did you do?

Greentea: I feel like I’m surrounded by a lot of Hispanic aspects of culture, especially food – there’s a grocery store by me full of interesting ingredients targeted at the local Latino population, I guess, but I love exploring when it comes to cooking. I constantly look up the provenance of traditional recipes. So I was looking up a recipe, when I came upon information about the Mexican celebration Day of the Dead. I’ve heard of the festival before, but the article just took hold of me. Suddenly it was many hours later and I found myself deep into researching this particular tradition and many peripheral aspects of the culture as well. Something about a culture that isn’t mournful about death, but treasures and invites their passed ones really touched me on a personal level – that is what made me want to delve into its world. I didn’t mean to write a story about it, that just happened I think because part of me wanted to share the gorgeously unique and non-melancholy idea behind the Day of the Dead festival. Even though I finished writing NENTEL l, I still continuously research this tradition, online and off.

Barajas :What helped you the most in achieving the last goal?

Greentea:  Laura’s gorgeous art really made a difference from the beginning – it’s just so striking. I tend to be very vocal on the Kickstarter blog for my projects, and this time I had so much art to show in the process updates. With every art-brimming update, people fell in love with Nenetl more and more.

Barajas: You have came up with some interesting pledge rewards and set yourself apart from the rest of the project out there. How do you come up with new rewards for your projects?

Greentea:  To tell you a secret, I actually find coming up with incentives really really hard. I have no idea how to create a gorgeous hoodie with Recipes art, or how to find someone to make a life-size plushie of a Nightbird! How do people do that? So I try to come up with bizarre things that no one else will think to have, and things that I feel they can have with them – like a guitar pick on a keychain. Plus, I discovered a lot of fathers these days play guitar. Maybe it’s a rebel baby boomer thing?

Barajas: What can you tell us about PAPA that isn’t already on the page?

Greentea:  PAPA is a collection of dark creepy stories about men put in difficult situations, men who also happen to be fathers. Children can be tragically influenced by their parents, and when their fathers are forced to react to their bizarre situations… well, none of the kids can take it lightly. What you can expect are twists and twisted endings, characters with emotional agendas, some humor, but most basically of all, stories about pride and fear and love.

Barajas: Was the making of this book a way to work out some underlining “daddy issues?”

Greentea:  Ha! Well, I wouldn’t say I have daddy issues per se, not more than anyone else at least – I do have an interesting father who I love. I find myself interested in relationships, especially the ones between parents and their children. Fathers and mothers are everything to a child, they’re practically their gods. But they’re also just people with human agendas, and silly goals, and just a bundle of ideas that can be absolutely wrong. All the fathers in PAPA are fallible and imperfect.

In the story of NENETL, the main theme is also about a child looking for her family, so I guess I don’t really veer that far from the particular concept of what is the importance of family.

Barajas: It feels like you have a lot of stories that you’re dying to share, why is this story important to tell?

Greentea: I actually wrote the stories of PAPA before I wrote Nenetl of the Forgotten Spirits. To Stop Dreaming of Goddesses, the first comic I wrote, is also rather dark – it’s about fighting your personal demons, even if you think they make you a better person. I think I became a little lighter lately, even as I write stories about long dead kids searching for someone to love them.

Henry Barajas is the co-creator, writer and letterer for El Loco and Captain Unikorn. He has also written and lettered short stories for two successful Kickstarter SpazDog Press projects: Unite and Take Over: Stories inspired by The Smiths and Break The Walls: Comic Stories inspired by The Pixies.  He is the Newsroom Research Assistant for The Arizona Daily Star and was nominated for the Shel Dorf Blogger of the Year award for his work at The Beat.  You can follow him on Twitter @HenryBarajas.

In case you didn’t catch it in January, check out here what the PaperTigers reading Challenge 2008 entails: there’s still plenty of time to join in!

We are running three in parallel in our household as my boys decided they wanted to complete it on their own, as well as do one as a bed-time readaloud… so here are our comments about Book Number One!

Back in October, I wrote a post about I Am Jack by Susanne Gervay - the time to read it came at the end of January when Big Brother had a few issues with bullying (now, I’m glad to say, resolved). As usual, I turned to stories as a springboard for discussion and we read it all together as our first Reading Challenge readaloud. Big Brother’s situation had been squashed very early on and certainly never got anywhere near what poor Jack has to endure but reading the book opened up comparisons and empathy. It brought home the importance of talking - and being available to listen. A couple of bedtimes were prolonged to read an extra chapter; and we had a very late night as we arrived at the end – we couldn’t possibly have left it hanging. Once again, I really recommend this book…

Meanwhile, Big Brother* (aged 9) chose Mga Kuwentong Bayan: Folk Stories from The Philippines edited by Alice Lucas and illustrated by Carl Angel. It is published by Many Cultures Publishing, a division of the nonprofit San Francisco Study Center. The book contains three stories: A Creation Story, The Monkey and the Turtle and Aponitolou and the Star Maiden. Here’s what Big Brother has to say about it:

I thought it was brilliant – especially the story where all the stars came onto the ground. It was about a star woman and a human man who fell in love with each other and the husband already had a wife on earth so he had to spend half a year in the sky and half a year down on the ground. I thought it was quite fun to have a different kind of book to read, with almost black and white pictures. I tried reading the Tagalog version but I didn’t get very far!

Little Brother (aged 6) had chosen The Birdman by Veronika Martenova Charles and illustrated by Annouchka Gravel Galouchko and Stéphan Daigle. It is the poignant true story of a Calcutta tailor who buys and sets free the sickly birds that are left at the end of a day’s trading at the market. You can read PaperTigers’ review of the book here, and here are Little Brother’s comments:

I really liked the pictures because they looked very artistic with lots of bright colours and dots on them. I really liked Noor Nobi’s idea of making a flock of poor birds. He set them free and they didn’t go far away because they loved him. I liked that it was a true story because something like that is very good and kind.

We will keep you posted on Number 2 of our Reading Challenge selections. In the meantime, do let us know how you’re getting on, if you’re already on board; or let us know your book choices, if you’re just starting.

* I have Here and There Japan to thank for helping me finally to come up with what to call my children in my blog postings: other possibilities had been commented upon and others were too much of a mouthful… I think this now works?!? So thank you, Annie!

The 1970’s marked the coming of age for Australian children’s literature, says YA writer Susanne Gervay. “There was a new breed of children’s authors and illustrators reflecting a confidence in an Australian identity and its landscape in all its diversity.” Contributing to the subsequent explosion of “best selling wickedly irreverent kids’ books” was the writers’ use of quirky Australian humor.

Among the writers of those “innovative, brazenly Australian” early books for children, Gervay cites Di Bates, a prolific writer who is still a bundle of energy. Bates produces a fortnightly online newsletter, Buzz Words, with industry news for writers, editors, illustrators and librarians. Subscribers also receive Books Buzz, a monthly compendium of reviews of new books by Australian children’s writers. Alliteration-loving Bates’ latest books are Big Bad Bruce and The Hold-Up Heroes.

Gervay’s own recent innovations in children’s literature are cross-media and inter-generational collaborations. After publishing frank and open YA books treating disability (Butterflies) and bullying (I Am Jack), her most recent book, That’s Why I Wrote This Song, was inspired by her rock musician daughter Tory’s lyrics and tune. Tory and Susanne now do speaking gigs together, and Susanne’s website features links to MySpace and YouTube. Her expertise on Cutting Edge YA Literature was featured in the July PaperTigers update. And here’s Aline’s recent blog post, with more details on Gervay’s cross-media innovations.

Last night I updated Aussiereviews, posting six new reviews. As always, there’s a mixed bag regarding target age and subject matter. The review of griEVE, which I raved about in an earlier post here (see below), is finally up – it’s been such a busy month that it’s taken me a while to find time to do it. Another superb young adult book which I’ve just reviewed is That’s Why I Wrote This Song, by

The new school year has kicked in now so I was glad to spot A Year of Reading’s recommendation of Monday with a Mad Genius by Mary Pope Osborne as a good read-aloud to bring some excitement and magic to those first few days back at school. I was interested, too, to read Mary Lee’s method for getting her class back into reading after the long summer vacation:

Lots of my students haven’t read all summer long, and I am modeling what they need to do to rebuild their fluency and stamina: start with lots of quick, easy reads to build confidence and refresh skills.

My younger son can’t keep his nose out of a book (sometimes I even get exasperated): but my older boy, who is about to turn 9, is starting to need some chivvying and he hasn’t read as much this summer as I would have hoped. One way I’ve found to encourage him is to sit down and read the first chapter to him… except then we all get into it and it turns into a bedtime book!

I’m about to try out the technique with Susanne Gervay’s superb book I Am Jack. You can read the first chapter on Susanne’s website. She has also provided some good ideas and materials to download. Reading the book together at home and discussing it provide a valuable springboard for bringing up the subject of bullying. By writing the story, Susanne has put into practice one of the messages that underpins the book: the pen is mightier than the sword. It presents a well-rounded perspective from all angles, whether that of the victim, the bully, friends, onlookers, teachers, schools or parents… And it’s also a cracking good story that I think he’ll enjoy. Maybe we’ll read it together all the way through then he’ll feel inspired to pick up the sequel, SuperJack…

I’ve just come back from one month in Brazil (where I was, unexpectedly, pretty much incommunicado) to find that I missed the Australian stop of the multi-blog event One Shot World Tour, organized by the same group that put together the Summer Blog Blast Tour and this week’s Recommendations from Under the Radar. Some of the dishes served up at the several-course (Vegemite and all) Australian meal were: interviews with Margo Lanagan and Queenie Chan at 7 Imp Things and the YA YA YAs, respectively, and an exploration of John Marsden’s Tomorrow Series at Jen Robinson’s Page (see full OSWT schedule here).

I’d like to add my contribution, late as it may be, by pointing folks to award-winning Australian writer Susanne Gervay’s latest ya book, That’s Why I Wrote This Song, a cutting edge story set against the rock music scene, about sixteen year old girls connected through music as they search for identity. In a recent article contributed to PaperTigers, Gervay tells us: “[The book] embraces other mediums and technologies, in a collaborative work with my songwriter and musician daughter, Tory, who wrote the lyrics and rock music that are integral to the story (…). The story also has the dimension of film, as a young producer translated Tory’s song ‘Psycho Dad’ into a film clip.” The song and the video are available for downloading from the author’s website.

For more Aussie kidlit talents, check out the following: interview with Hazel Edwards, ‘personal views’ article by Chris Cheng, and Caroline Magerl and Shaun Tan online galleries.

… and if you haven’t checked it out yet, be sure to do so. The focus of this issue is Young Adult books, including interviews with YA authors Alan Gratz (Samurai Shortstop) and Hazel Edwards (Antarctica’s Frozen Chosen); and YA librarian Miranda Doyle. Our Illustrators’ Gallery focuses on two artists who have contributed greatly to making illustration relevant to Young Adults: Shaun Tan (The Arrival) and Gene Yang (American Born Chinese).

Book of the Month is Paul Yee’s What Happened This Summer, a rich collection of short stories about different teenagers growing up in Toronto, with a focus on their Chinese Canadian backgrounds. If you’re looking for inspiration about which book to read next, try our Reviews section; and take a look at those selected by writers Susanne Gervay in her Personal View YA Books: Cutting Edge Literature and Mitali Perkins in hers, Teens Between Cultures: A Reading List.

I have also picked out a short list of only some of the wonderful YA books we have featured on PaperTigers: Open up and get reading: YA books you just can’t put down and I hope you will add some of your own suggestions - we would love to hear from you.