Rush’s Fanfiction

I just filed a column for the SCBWI New England newsletter on the big publishing corporations’ newfound respect for fanfiction—because it’s a way to make money. Big firms are checking fanfiction sites for authors who can craft a story (Sourcebooks), licensing fictional universes (Amazon), and commissioning latter-day sequels from big-name authors (practically every major children’s publisher in the UK, it seems).

Right on cue, the Children’s Choice Award for Author of the Year went to Rush Limbaugh for his historical fanfiction picture-storybooks, Rush Revere and the Brave Pilgrims and Rush Revere and the First Patriots.

Alexandra Petri at the Washington Post recognized the hero of these books as a classic Mary Sue author stand-in back in December, quoting such lines as:

• “A fine answer, Rush Revere,” said William [Bradford], smiling. “Are you sure you don’t want to be governor?”
  
• Liberty [the horse] again whispered to me, “William really put you on the spot with that question. I couldn’t have dug you out of that one. Nice job answering him! Maybe you should get your own radio talk show. You know, callers call in with questions and you give them advice and stuff. I’d totally call you!”
• “You are always thinking of the future, Rush Revere,” said William, smiling. “I like that about you.”

This week Vicky Smith at Kirkus reached the same judgment, quoting from the title character’s introduction:

“You know that at Manchester Middle School we have the smartest and most educated teachers. It is my pleasure to introduce you to your substitute, Mr. Revere.”

Of course, these books are also commercial ventures. Debbie Reese noted that Limbaugh’s own website describes his company buying “10,000 or 15,000” copies to give to schools. Such bulk sales are a common way to jumpstart books onto bestseller lists, where they benefit from increased visibility. But these books aren’t just product in themselves: they also help to sell Rush Limbaugh’s other goods, with an illustration showing his branded iced tea.

Limbaugh’s two books are the only juvenile titles that Simon & Schuster’s politically conservative Threshold Editions imprint has published, and two of the very few fictional books. So the editors there may not have recognized the fanfiction for what it is. Then again, with guaranteed sales and a heavyweight author, they probably didn’t care.

Greatest “Between Good and Awesome”

Back in April, Brian Gardes at the Stumptown Literary Review provided a very nice review of The Greatest of All Time Comics Anthology:

As with most anthologies there were some stories which were more successful than others. However, under the careful eye of editors Dan Mazur and Jesse Lonergan, these variations in quality fluctuate between good and awesome. . . .

While it is often a risk to purchase an anthology, I cannot recommend The Greatest of All Time Comics Anthology enough. It has a solid creative line up, great production values (twenty color pages in a small press book?!?!), and an enjoyable read from cover to cover!

Braden Lamb and I collaborated on one story in that collection, “The Greatest Spy of All Time.” Braden and his wife, Shelli Paroline, won Eisner Awards this summer for their work on Adventure Time, so I can’t argue that this publication was the highlight of the past twelve months for him, but I certainly enjoyed it.

Ninth Art Press’s next comics anthology will be about subcultures; here’s the call for submissions.

Parity in Publishing?

On Wednesday, 16 October, the University of Connecticut in Storrs will host a panel on “Gendered Publishing: The State of the Profession for Women Writers and Illustrators of Children’s Literature.” The discussion starts at 6:30 in the Class of 1947 Room of the Homer Babbidge Library. Participants are:

• Barbara McClintock, author/illustrator
• Gene Kannenberg, Jr., director of ComicsResearch.org
• Lisa Rowe Fraustino, professor and department chair of English at Eastern Connecticut State University (ECSU)
• Susannah Richards, associate professor of Education at ECSU and member of the 2013 Newbery Award Committee

On that recurring topic, last month The Horn Book published Martha Parravano’s essay “It’s Always Men’s Night at the Caldecott.” Since we live in the Most Overstated Era EVUH!, we can accept that Parravano’s “Always” actually referred to men winning the Caldecott Medal 63% of the time over seventy-five years. Over the last twenty years, male artists have been even more commonly rewarded: sixteen men and four women have won the Medal.

However, a commenter signing on as “Scope Notes” noted:

Total side note here, but an interesting thing I’ve found is that the Newbery has nearly identical numbers, but in reverse – 66% female to 34% male.

Over the past twenty years, fourteen women and six men have won the Newbery Medal—again, a growing disparity.

Of course, we should include a much harder factor to measure: how many men and women are writing or illustrating children’s books? Which gets us to another question: how many women and men are trying?

I started attending SCBWI conferences about twenty years ago, and immediately saw how women outnumbered men in the audience. In organizing those conferences, we always ask the host hotel to turn a men’s bathroom into a ladies’ room for the day. Yet the gender ratio of people on the podium—i.e., the authors and artists who have achieved recognition in the field—is usually closer to parity.

Adding to the complexity of the issue is how most parts of the children’s-literature chain—literary agencies, publishing departments, review journals, library staffs—are more female than male, though not as often at the top. And then there’s the question of who’s reading the most books.

The New Didacticism

The International Reading Association’s Literacy and Social Responsibility Special Interest Group has announced a new award for children’s books: The Social Justice Literature Award.

The group’s announcement says:

This award is presented to honor books that address social responsibility towards individuals, communities, societies, and/or the environment as well as invite reflection and socially responsible action by the reader. . . .

Selected books include picture books and non-picture books, with poetry, narrative, and nonfiction titles appropriate for each category. Books selected for a given year must be published in the United States by the end of the preceeding year…[and] must meet the following criteria:

Strong Literary and Artistic Qualities, including but not limited to:

• Fostering respect and understanding of a diverse population
• Promoting equity, justice, peace, and/or social responsibility
• Presenting social issues in their complexity
• Addressing social responsibility towards individuals, communities, societies, and/or the environment

Reader Response:

• Appealing to the intended audience
• Inviting reflection and socially responsible action by the reader
• Analyzing causes of injustice and revealing alternatives and/or challenges to the injustice, opening the imagination to other possibilities

I support the social goals stated in the award criteria. I don’t think that books which promote such ends or are even written to promote them must necessarily come across as didactic. Nor do I think that books without explicit political or social messages really lack political and social implications. And I even think that the American children’s-book industry is already somewhat didactic, though it may resist that label.

Still, I see in this award description a conflation of “Literary and Artistic Qualities” with political goals and outcomes. I’d prefer to see an award for books that promote those ideas or explore those themes and also exhibit strong literary and artistic qualities separate from ideology.

“Have the end in sight”

The Guardian asked five children’s-book editors with books up for an award [that I’ve never heard of—“Branford Boase”?] for their advice for new authors.

David Fickling of The Phoenix magazine and many books included this in his answer:

People always say that a story must have a beginning, a middle and an end. If that is true then by far the most important part is the end. Before you set off on a writing project it saves a lot of time to have the end in sight.

That doesn't mean you have to know exactly what is going to happen at the end of your story, but you should have a sense of the ending note in mind. This may also help tell you how long your text is going to be.

And you don't need to tell the editor or publisher what will happen or what it's about either, that's your business. All the editor or publisher really needs is the reassurance that there is an ending and that the narrative will be good. Editing is all about trust.

The last part of Fickling’s comment runs directly counter to what American agents and editors say about synopses: you have to divulge the ending. Otherwise, they won’t trust you to supply a good one. But perhaps Fickling is now used to working with authors who’ve built up trust with him.

Torn About the Eisners, and a Bookstore Appearance

The new Eisner Nominations for “Best Publication for Kids (ages 8-12)” present me with a dilemma:

• Adventure Time, by Ryan North, Shelli Paroline, and Braden Lamb (kaboom!)
• Amulet Book 5: Prince of the Elves, by Kazu Kibuishi (Scholastic)
• Cow Boy: A Boy and His Horse, by Nate Cosby and Chris Eliopoulos (Archaia)
• Crogan’s Loyalty, by Chris Schweizer (Oni)
• Hilda and the Midnight Giant, by Luke Pearson (Nobrow)
• Road to Oz, by L. Frank Baum, adapted by Eric Shanower and Skottie Young (Marvel)

Braden Lamb generously collaborated with me on “The Greatest Spy Ever,” our contribution to The Greatest Comics Anthology of All Time.

Eric Shanower gently gave me my first tips on writing for comics, and less gently the valuable encouragement to just get started: “Page One, Panel 1….” Years back, he illustrated my short story “Jack Pumpkinhead’s Day in Court.”

I even owe Chris Schweizer for reacting so politely to my worry about his eighteenth-century characters, as in Crogan’s Loyalty, having facial hair—which would be all wrong for the eighteenth-century British Empire.

So I don’t know whom to root for. But tomorrow afternoon Braden and I, along with his partner in all things, Shelli Paroline; our publisher, Dan Mazur; and Fletcher Hanks successor Joey Peters, will be selling and signing books at Comicopia in Boston’s Kenmore Square neighborhood. Braden and Shelli will be there from noon to three; Dan, Joey, and I have the three-to-six shift. This is one of the short-notice events that popped up after this spring’s Boston Comic Con had to be indefinitely postponed because, you may have heard, the whole metro area was shut down yesterday.

Less Than Noble Nobel Considerations

Earlier this year, the Guardian reported on disclosures from the Swedish Academy about the discussion behind the awarding of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1962. They show how many considerations there were besides literary quality.

For example, Karen Blixen (Isak Dinesen) might well have had the inside track as a Scandinavian—but then she died, and the prize can’t be awarded posthumously. (A person can die between the announcement and the awards ceremony.)

The academy was evidently waiting for Ezra Pound to die as well. Its members considered him the greatest poet then working in English, but also politically unacceptable. That meant they wouldn’t give him the prize, but equally they wouldn’t give it to another English-language poet until he died—and that scotched the chances of Robert Graves (shown here).

So eventually the academy awarded that year’s prize to…John Steinbeck. Even at the time, he was considered not up to the standard of other literature laureates. But Steinbeck’s stature has obviously been raised by the Nobel. I wonder whether, if those other considerations hadn’t intervened, he would have had been such a presence on my junior-high reading list?

Spiegelman in Retrospection

Last night I attended a talk by Art Spiegelman at Northeastern University. During the Q&A at the end, an audience member asked what he was working on now, and Spiegelman explained that he had just gone through a period of, if I recall right, “forced retrospection.”

First came the opportunity to republish some of his earliest work, in Breakdowns. That involved revisiting his underground comics of the 1970s. I suspect very few people can casually review their activity during the ’70s without needing time to recover.

Then came the long-gestating Metamaus, a sprawling compilation of material that went into his two-volume masterwork Maus. More than 7,000 drawings, interviews, videos, and other raw material to be assembled in a book-DVD package.

Then the renowned comics festival at Angoulême invited Spiegelman to be president of its jury and receive the Grand Prix de la Ville, an honor which came with a career retrospective at the city museum. So he had to help organize that.

Spiegelman was back from France only four days when he spoke in Boston. He thus barely had his feet on home soil and was quite unsure what project he would take up next. But it’s clearly an interesting moment in his career, when past achievements have been so clearly laid out and codified.

Apparently It’s Art

The New England Journal of Aesthetic Research has listed the art edition of Hellbound 2, a horror-comics anthology produced by Riverbird Studios for the Boston Comics Roundtable, as a nominee for its 2011 New England Art Award in the Book category.

A story that Andy Wong and I created, “RobMeBlind.com,” is in that collection, along with many other originals from local artists and writers.

Voting is open until 24 Feb 2012. I’m just saying.

I must admit, however, that I’m even more excited to see the journal’s page on Worst Public Art in New England, and particularly that the godawful Irish Famine Memorial near Old South is at the top of that list.

Cybils for 2011

The Cybils Award shortlists for 2011 have been announced, representing blogging volunteers’ judgments of what children’s books offer the best combination of quality and kid appeal.

There’s a new category this year of Book Apps. Nominees include three brand names established for decades (Harold and the Purple Crayon, Pat the Bunny, and The Monster at the End of This Book) and what look like four originals:

• Be Confident in Who You Are
• Bobo Explores Light
• Hildegard Sings
• The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Horace Lessmore

It’s notable that two of the three adaptations are of picture books that were interactive before electronics, and the third plays with the reality of its world. It’s also notable that the originals lean toward the didactic. I’ll probably try some of these out now that iHave an iPad.

What Made Maus YA?

More remarks on our cultural assumption that comics must be appropriate for kids from Dwight Garner’s review of Art Spiegelman’s MetaMaus in the New York Times:

When the book won a young-adult award from librarians, he was peeved. “I’d made something as mature as I was capable of making, and it seemed unfair that I was a victim of a prejudice against my medium,” he says. Ultimately, he says, “I reconciled to the fact that if ‘Gulliver’s Travels’ and ‘Huckleberry Finn’ can be considered children’s books, I can settle for ‘Maus’ being on those shelves.”

Gulliver’s Travels is considered appropriate for young readers because of its fantastic element, and because many retellings have been bowdlerized of such scenes as Gulliver putting out a fire for the Lilliputians. Huckleberry Finn gets on that shelf because it has a child as protagonist and narrator. Maus is there because it’s in comics form, with talking animals.

An Honor Just to Be Nominated

It turns out that the Harvard Book Store editors of the Minimum Paige comics anthology I wrote about yesterday awarded prizes to their favorite entries.

And it turns out Alex Cormack and I won second prize for our story, “Essex County Literary Wax Museum & Menagerie.” That story also opens the collection on a “literary” note.

The first-prize winner was writer-artist Robert Sergel for a two-page story called “Control.”

Third prize went to Lindsay Moore and Laurel Leake for “Amazons vs. Valkyries,” a wordless comic about sports and mythology which you can also read here.

And speaking of Amazons, I came away from the book’s launch party with a Wonder Woman figurine. (There were door prizes.) Alas, I didn’t get to see the Paige M. Gutenberg print-on-demand machine actually make a copy of the book.

Fonts of Wisdom in Origami Yoda

At the back of Tom Angleberger’s The Strange Case of Origami Yoda is one of those usually high-falutin’ notes on typography:

The main text is set in 10-point Lucida Sans Typewriter. The display typeface is ERASER. Tommy’s comments are set in Kienan, and Harvey’s comments are set in Good Dog.

That note lists more fonts than is common, but still greatly understates the situation. There are other chapters credited to the characters Mike, Sara, Cassie, Lance, Marcie, Quavondo, and Rhondella, each in its own font. There are posters and suspension slips in yet more typefaces, probably also overseen by designer Melissa Arnst.

Origami Yoda has what my Parameters of Narrative Voice system calls a clear Paper Trail: the novel is made to read like a document or collection of documents from its fictional world. And in this case it looks reasonably like such documents as well: a middle-schooler’s report on recent events with classmates’ contributions, handwritten comments, illustrations, and graffiti.

Because Origami Yoda has such a powerful visual dimension, I was surprised to see it just won the E.B. White Read-Aloud Award. With good training and preparation, a reader could use different voices for each narrator to match the fonts. But how can an oral delivery get across the wrinkled pattern laid under each page, suggesting the whole document has been stuffed several times into a backpack? How does one read aloud a sketch of a Shakespeare bust falling down the margin of one page and saying, “Oh Poop!” upside-down?

(In classrooms, I suspect the answer to the last question is “Very carefully.”)

Eisner Nomination Season

Nominations for the Eisner Awards for achievements in the comics form are out, and some were particularly pleasing to me:

Best Publication for Kids

• Amelia Rules!: True Things (Adults Don’t Want Kids to Know), by Jimmy Gownley (Atheneum/Simon & Schuster)

Best Publication for Teens

• Smile, by Raina Telgemeier (Scholastic Graphix)
• Yummy: The Last Days of a Southside Shorty, by G. Neri and Randy DuBurke (Lee & Low) (review here)
  

Best Humor Publication

• Prime Baby, by Gene Luen Yang (First Second)

Best Digital Comic

• Max Overacts, by Caanan Grall, http://occasionalcomics.com

Best Adaptation from Another Work

• The Marvelous Land of Oz, by L. Frank Baum, adapted by Eric Shanower and Skottie Young (Marvel)

Best Archival Collection/Project—Comic Books

• Lynd Ward: Six Novels in Woodcuts, edited by Art Spiegelman [and in-house editor Christopher Carduff] (The Library of America)

Best Penciller/Inker or Penciller/Inker Team

• Skottie Young, The Marvelous Land of Oz (Marvel)

Best Coloring

• Jimmy Gownley, Amelia Rules!: True Things (Adults Don’t Want Kids to Know), Amelia Rules!: The Tweenage Guide to Not Being Unpopular, by Jimmy Gownley (Atheneum/Simon & Schuster)
• Hilary Sycamore, City of Spies, etc. (First Second)

Best Lettering

• Jimmy Gownley, Amelia Rules!: True Things (Adults Don’t Want Kids to Know), Amelia Rules!: The Tweenage Guide to Not Being Unpopular, by Jimmy Gownley (Atheneum/Simon & Schuster)
• Todd Klein, Fables, etc.
  

Best Comics-Related Book

• Doonesbury and the Art of G. B. Trudeau, by Brian Walker (Yale University Press) (review here)

Cybils Award Winners for 2010 (with a few comments)

The 2010 Cybils Award list was announced this morning. I wasn’t involved in the judging, unlike past years, because of a big writing deadline. But I’m pleased to see the judges liked some of the books that struck me over the past few months, whether or not I got around to writing about them. And I’m delighted to have the whole lists of winners and nominees to consider in the months and years ahead.

And the winners are…

Fiction Picture Books
Interrupting Chicken, by David Ezra Stein

Nonfiction Picture Books
The Extraordinary Life of Mark Twain (According to Susy), by Barbara Kerley

Easy Readers
We Are in a Book!, by Mo Willems

Short Chapter Books
Zapato Power: Freddie Ramos Takes Off, by Jacqueline Jules; illustrated by Miguel Benitez

Poetry
Mirror Mirror: A Book of Reversible Verse, by Marilyn Singer, illustrated by Josée Masse
Nifty. Singer uses our familiarity with classic fairy tales to sum up some of those stories in “reversos,” free-verse poems that read the same whether from first line to last, or last line to first. As a bonus, the reversos usually provide a new perspective on the tales: from a different character, or a different point in time. Masse’s illustrations expand on the themes of mirroring and symmetry.

Graphic Novels
Meanwhile: Pick Any Path. 3856 Story Possibilities, by Jason Shiga
I wrote about Shiga as a “math cartoonist” back here, and about the possibilities of branching paths in traditional comics here. Meanwhile has gotten most of its attention for its algorithmic structure. However, the crazy scientific devices that the hero encounters also leave readers with interesting logical questions. For example, if you have a machine that wipes everything out of existence, can you ever experience having pushed that button?

Fantasy & Science Fiction
The Shadows: The Books of Elsewhere, Vol. 1, by Jacqueline West

Middle Grade Fiction
The Strange Case of Origami Yoda, by Tom Angleberger
I admire any author who can find fun in middle school. Another interesting aspect of this novel is the notion, raised by some readers, that one crucial character has Asperger’s syndrome. The past decade has brought a number of fine books touching on that condition, some with “Aspie” protagonists figuring out the world and others with protagonists living with “Aspie” relatives. Here the character, if indeed he qualifies, is simply one of many quirky kids in the quirky middle-school culture.

Young Adult Non-fiction
The Secret of the Yellow Death: A True Story of Medical Sleuthing, by Suzanne Jurmain

Young Adult Graphic Novels
Yummy; The Last Days of a Southside Shorty, by G. Neri, illustrated by Randy DuBurke
My still-somewhat-in-shock review here, and remarks on how Randy DuBurke worked with his collaborators here.

Young Adult Fantasy & Science Fiction

Rot & Ruin, by Jonathan Maberry

Young Adult Fiction
Split, by Swati Avasthi

Literature for Young People Today

These are the nominees for the National Book Award for Literature for Young People, announced today.

• Paolo Bacigalupi, Ship Breaker
• Kathryn Erskine, Mockingbird
• Laura McNeal, Dark Water
• Walter Dean Myers, Lockdown
• Rita Williams-Garcia, One Crazy Summer

Notably, three of these five novels have protagonists who are young people of color. In the rest, Dark Water’s main character enters a relationship with a young Latino migrant, and the protagonist of Mockingbird has Asperger’s syndrome.

Of course, the NBA pool tends to choose from the “high end” of children’s literature, which is more likely to include serious novels, historical fiction, and explorations of the experiences of social outsiders. Still, it’s an interesting snapshot.

To the Moon and Back

Moonshot: The Flight of Apollo 11, by Brian Floca, is an excellent nonfiction picture book retelling the history of the first human mission to the Moon.

The prose is tight and poetic, its tone a mix of matter-of-fact and awestruck. Pages jump between the astronauts in space, mission control back on Earth, and a family watching the action on their living room TV. This history doesn’t dig back into the geopolitics of the space race, or ahead to the end of lunar missions; it focuses on that human achievement of July 1969.

I enjoyed watching how Floca used his art and design to pace his story. The first illustration after the text starts is a landscape on Earth with the Moon as a distant crescent in the sky. Floca frames this round image in the blank white page, both opening the book slowly and symbolizing how this life is limited to Earth.

Later that image’s blue, green, and white colors make a visual rhyme for the image of a round Earth in the black sky that we finally see at the end of the astronauts' visit to the Moon. And as a coda, the book’s final illustration is also a round landscape, blue and green. But now there’s a full Moon overhead, and the family we’ve seen throughout the book is running across the grass.

Floca breaks down the rocket countdown into six rectangular panels on one spread, ticking off the seconds. Turn the page, and the liftoff is the first full page spread of the book.

Even the endpapers in Moonshot get put to use, in different ways. The front set shows the stages of the lunar rocket while the back set retells the history in more detailed prose suitable for school-report research.

Of course, this is a journey many books have taken before. There’s a lot of source material about the lunar missions, and a built-in market. Moonshot even got published on the fortieth anniversary of the landing. Last year’s Cybils Non-Fiction Picture Book winner, The Day-Glo Brothers, got points from us judges for being the very first book on its topic. But Moonshot is also terrific, and deserves the other awards it’s brought home.

Pondering Sacred Cows

Another title on the Cybils’ Non-fiction Picture Book shortlist last year is 14 Cows for America, written by Carmen Agra Deedy in collaboration with Wilson Kimeli Naiyomah, and illustrated by Thomas Gonzalez. This is the story of a Maasai community’s decision to make a symbolic gift of cows to the USA after the terrorist attack on New York in September 2001.

14 Cows for America certainly looks like a beautiful children’s picture book. The full-page spreads glow with Kenyan portraits and Kenyan landscapes. The text is simple and clear, forming events into a fable.

But as I read it, I kept wondering whether this content holds more appeal for children, or for adults? There are no young characters, or child stand-ins. Instead, the central figure is a medical student, and the major decision-makers are tribal elders. The text alludes to the precipitating event of the terrorist attacks delicately; American adults would have no difficulty recognizing the allusions, but most of today’s picture-book readers probably have no memory of 2001.

Does 14 Cows for America offer a meaningful narrative? The “plot” involves a distant conflict, no character growth, and a purely symbolic resolution. (The Maasai actually keep the fourteen cows.) Gonzalez carefully hides the face of the American ambassador, so he can never be more than a symbol.

Picture books are supposed to need at least a dozen interesting, visually varied scenes—not just the same characters talking in the same space. 14 Cows for America basically shows two related events:

• The medical student comes home to his community, bringing his story of seeing the terrorist attack.
• Some time later, the diplomat arrives to take symbolic possession of those “sacred, healing cows.”

Imagine trying to build a picture book around a European community that hears about the 2001 terrorist attacks, decides to organize a public mourning ceremony, and then goes through with it.

In the end, 14 Cows for America struck me as more of a thick greeting card, made to express a solidarity of feeling between giver and recipient, than a narrative or informational book. It fulfills that function well—as I said, the pictures are beautiful, and the events well told to produce emotional meaning. But I suspect 14 Cows for America wouldn’t work if it couldn’t take advantage of its exotic setting and exotic behavior.

Catching Up with the Cybils

The 2011 Cybils season has started with an invitation to bloggers to volunteer as panelists and judges. I’ve been a judge in different categories each year since the Cybils began, and enjoy the chance to sample the best of the latest children’s literature and to discuss those books with dedicated and knowledgeable critics. It’s a very rewarding experience!

This seems to be a good time to finish posting my thoughts on runners-up for last year’s Non-Fiction Picture Book Award. The winner we chose was The Day-Glo Brothers, written by Chris Barton and illustrated by Tony Persiani, as discussed back here. But it was one of an impressive group.

Another shortlisted title was Faith, created by Maya Ajmera, Magde Nakassis, and Cynthia Pon for the Global Fund for Children. Like other GFC books, this is a photo-essay showing children all over the world.

The photos are big, bright, and varied. They come with a lot of verbal information, in the captions on the same page and in the back of the book. Out of 48 total pages, 9 are commentary and glossary and 36 primarily photographs.

In the end, I’m not sure the book gets to the essence of religious faith, however. It shows those parts of the human phenomenon that are (a) photographable, and (b) uncontroversial. The pictures show young people singing, for example, but the captions don’t say what they’re singing. In emphasizing the similarities among the behaviors shown, the book doesn’t acknowledge the differences among religions, or how big people make them.

Indeed, at the end the book states, “We respect others, making friends and building peace,” as a final unifier. It does not acknowledge how people—including people with good intent—have often used religious belief as a justification or accelerant for disrespecting others, making enemies, and going to war.

Readers couldn’t tell from Faith that most religions come with:

• origin myths describing the birth of the universe and of the faith itself.
• moral codes that combine basic precepts and traditional customs, sometimes at odds with those principles.
• explanations of what happens after death.
• statements or presumptions that this form of religious observance is correct, and others are more or less wrong—more wrong sometimes condemning others to second-class treatment and/or everlasting punishment.

Nor does the book discuss how many of those tenets are unprovable and taken on, well, faith.

Reasons to Smile

Today Roger Sutton announced that Raina Telgemeier’s memoir Smile is an Honor Book in the Nonfiction category of the 2010 Boston Globe/Horn Book Awards.

Even before that news, the book’s first printing sold out—despite the fact that it’s still possible to read Smile on the web. Like Jeff Kinney’s Diary of a Wimpy Kid (discussed here), Telgemeier’s book took a path to publication that seems paradoxical yet worked.

Both Kinney and Telgemeier shared their stories on the web before finding publishers. That exposure helped them to build a following as they developed their vision. Lots of people liked the result. Some of those people probably still see no need to buy the books, but many more did buy, and told their friends as well.

Since I ended my SCBWI New England conference workshop on comics scripting by suggesting that this model looked like the best route to publication, I’m delighted to have a new example of success to point to.

Jason Green interviewed Telgemeier for Playback:stl about her choice to display finished pages on the web as she created them, starting in 2004. Telgemeier explained:

I really love the print medium, and so [that] was always what I wanted to do, was to make books. And the webcomics thing happened because people kept saying, “Put your stuff on the web! Put your stuff on the web!” I didn’t know how to do that! I didn’t know what an FTP program was, I didn’t know how to get comics from my page to a screen. I had to have it all explained to me, over and over again, in detail, before I sort of figured it out.

And once I did, it was like, “Oh, I get it, you can get a much bigger audience this way, and you can really do a lot of interesting things with page layouts,” and stuff like that. But, because I came from print, I was still not stretching my wings too far as far as the format of the story, and I knew that I wanted to print it someday. So, I think it was like I was making a print graphic novel, but I was serializing it on the web on a weekly basis.

Before then, Telgemeier had self-published her mini-comic Takeout, another way of developing an audience. That route was easier years ago, given the economics of comics distribution, but today the web is clearly more affordable and powerful. Of course, you’ve gotta have appealing content and the energy to promote it.

In the same year that Telgemeier started to share Smile, Scholastic’s David Saylor announced that the firm had commissioned her to adapt Ann S. Martin’s Baby-Sitters Club into comics form. The success of those books helped put her name on booksellers’ computers.

Telgemeier could probably have published Smile herself, based on that success, but the effort would have taken a lot of her time. Instead, she signed with Scholastic. That firm has a powerful distribution arm, including those school book fairs. It has the capital to invest in color printing, as with Jeff Smith’s Bone, which sets the print edition of Smile off from the web pages. And there’s still cachet in coming out through a major publisher—but that’s not as valuable as an already established readership.