By Geoffrey Hayes (Toon Books/Raw Junior)
ISBN: 978-0-9799238-9-0
Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: the perfect present for keeping adults quiet and opening a world of adventure for young kids… 10/10
Once upon a time – and for the longest time imaginable – comics were universally denigrated as a creative and narrative ghetto cherished only by children and simpletons. For decades the producers, creators and lovers of the medium struggled to change that perception and gradually acceptance came. Now most folk accept that the word and pictures in sequential union can make stories and tell truths as valid, challenging and life-changing as any other full-blown art-form
Sadly, along the way the commercial underpinnings of the industry went too far. Where once there were a myriad of successful, self-propagating comics scrupulously generating tales and delights intended to entertain, inform and educate such specific demographics as Toddler/Kindergarten, Young and Older Juvenile, General, Boys and Girls periodical publications, nowadays Britain and America can only afford to maintain a few paltry out-industry licensed tie-ins and spin-offs for younger readerships.
The greater proportion of strip magazines are necessarily manufactured for a highly specific – and dwindling – niche market, whilst the genres that fed and nurtured comics are more effectively and expansively disseminated via TV, movies and assorted video and interactive games media.
Thankfully old-fashioned book publishers and the new graphic novel industry have a different business model and far more sensible long-term goals, so the lack has been increasingly countered and the challenge to train and bring youngsters into the medium taken up outside the mainstream – and dying – periodical markets.
I’ve banged on for years about the comics industry’s tragic loss of the beginner reading markets, but what they’ve been collectively offering young/early consumers – and their parents – has seldom jibed with what those incredibly selective people are interested in or need. Recently however the book trade has moved with the times and where numerous publishing houses have opened comic medium divisions, one in particular has gone all-out to cultivate tomorrow’s graphic narrative nation.
Toon Books/Raw Junior was established by Art Spiegelman and Françoise Mouly as an imprint of the groundbreaking and legendary alternative comics magazine, intended and designed to provide beautiful, high-quality comics stories in premium formats that would entice pre-schoolers and beginning readers into a lifelong love affair with strips in particular and reading in general.
Their burgeoning stable of talented creators have produced a wealth of superbly superior comic tales in three educational standards (Level 1: First Comic for brand new readers, Level 2: Easy-to-Read for Emerging Readers and Level 3: Chapter Books for Advanced Beginners) and the company even supplements their publications with an on-line tool.
TOON-BOOKS.com offers follow up such as interactive audio-versions read by the authors – and in a multitude of languages – and a “cartoon maker†facility which allows readers to become writers of their own adventures about the characters they have just met in the printed editions. Most books also include a page of tips for parents and teachers on ‘How to Read Comics with Kids’…
I’m kicking off a week of Kids Stuff with the multi-award winning Benny and Penny in The Big No-No!, the second in an on-going series of complete tales starring a typical brother-and sister act of sometimes wayward suburban mice.
Author Geoffrey Hayes is a veteran of the Children’s entertainment scene, having written and/or illustrated more than 40 books (including Otto and Uncle Tooth, Bear by Himself, the Patrick Bear series and Margaret Wise Brown’s When the Wind Blew among so many others) and proudly affirms that Benny & Penny’s anthropomorphic exploits are drawn in coloured pencil.
When a new kid moves in next door bellicose, rambunctious older brother Benny is keen to sneak a peek through the garden fence, but is as usual distracted by his annoying little sister. Soon his attention wanders, but when he can’t find his pail, suspicion quickly settles on the mysterious as yet unseen newcomer…
Taking stuff is a “No-No†– something that you just don’t do, but then again so is climbing into someone else’ garden uninvited – especially if they leave such big, scary-looking footprints…
When Benny finds a pail in the dirt, he indignantly reclaims it and gets into a literal mud-slinging match with the little mole girl Melina. He even calls her a monster!
Escaping the mean new kid and running safely back to their own yard, the mice then discover Benny’s pail, just where he left it.
Because they’re good kids Benny and Penny take the stolen bucket back and apologise, but even after making amends and becoming friends with Melina – especially Penny – big, boisterous Benny just can’t avoid messing about and making trouble – or is he just being a boy?
The girls certainly think so!
Aimed at the four-and-above age-range and released as a child-sized (236x162mm), gloriously evocative, beguilingly beautiful 32 page full colour hardback, Benny and Penny in The Big No-No! is the kind of pictorial treasure that kids and their minders will be drawn back to over and over again.
© 2009 Raw Junior, LLC. All rights reserved.