“Finding Friendships: Middle Grade Comics” Panel at MICE 2024
MICE has been in that building for the past few years, but this is the latest the show has been scheduled, in the gift-buying season.
On Saturday, 7 December, I’m going to moderate a panel discussion at MICE titled “Finding Friendships: Middle Grade Comics.”
The four panelists are, in alphabetical order with their middle-grade books:
- Johnnie Christmas, Gamerville and Swim Team.
- Debbie Fong, Next Stop.
- Emma Hunsinger, How It All Ends.
- Shaina Lu, Noodle & Bao.
Christmas was one of Margaret Atwood’s collaborators on Angel Catbird and drew or wrote other adventure comics for adults like Tartarus and Alien 3. Fong illustrated prose books for young people, including the YA anthology Banned Together. Hunsinger was best known for her short comic “How to Draw a Horse,” published in The New Yorker. She’s also co-created a picture book, My Parents Won’t Stop Talking. Lu is an educator here in greater Boston whose projects included a community mural in Chinatown.
It’s usually easy to see connections from these artists’ earlier work to their new books. For instance, Lu’s Noodle & Bao is about gentrification in an urban neighborhood. Hunsinger’s How It All Ends and “How to Draw a Horse” both start with sharing adjoining desks in a high-school class.
I interpret this confluence as a sign of the strength of the market for middle-grade graphic novels in recent years. Agents and publishers drew in talent from all directions, and we have a wider range of stories as a result.
