Little book, big book, book friends…

I am in no way an expert on the history of books that are small in size, but I have collected quite a few through the years. I don’t know why…I just realized that I have several boxes of some very odd, almost always mass-produced (these are NOT artisan creations) books that are just really, really small.

This is named, obviously, Chooch, The Little Engine. It’s copyright states it’s Vol 2, book 13, from 1966. A series produced by Cracker Jack Miniature Books. It measures 1.25 x 1.75 inches. A double page spread would be a whopping 2.75 inches wide, though it has no double page spread.

I recently acquired another book released a few years ago from IDW. It’s a collection of the cartoon work of Sergio Aragones, who was and still is my all time cartoon hero. Called Groo The Wanderer, Artist’s Edition. It’s one of a series of books printed by IDW that are at 100% size of the original art done by the artists. They shot the actual art pages, white out, notes, printing comments and all. It’s beautiful. Remember a few months ago I was going to stop buying books…well not so much.

It measures in at 12.25 x 17.25 inches and DOES feature double page spreads that are 24.5 inches wide. WOW.

Here are the two books and a Sharpie for reference.

Little book and big book getting along just fine. But sharing the same shelf is probably not in their futures.

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How many books can a bookchuck chuck if a bookchuck…

too many books illustration. Mark Fearing

Here’s an update on my book-letting. Two months ago I wrote about my need to get rid of books. That perhaps being buried alive by books in my studio isn’t the way I want to go…though honestly, it’s not a bad way all things being equal.

And now for some blog-honesty…I haven’t gotten rid of one single book.

I tried. We had visitors for Thanksgiving and I tried to talk them into taking some books with them to read on the way home. But they already had plenty of books.

It gets worse…I recently purchased three new books and my bet is the Holidays will see me get at least one or two or three or more. So I am losing the ‘war on books’. I may never move from this house. I don’t have the energy to box-up all these books…

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Too many books…

Too many books. Too many shelves packed with books.

There, I said it. I have too many books and they are beginning to weigh on me more than I want them to. So it’s time to start deleveraging. So to speak.

It’s a big decision to make. But I plan on getting a box, then going through all the books on my shelves and I will keep only the books that fill that one box. No more, no less. I have too many tomes that I haven’t looked at in 15 years. I have those ‘Art Of’ books from animated films. Probably a dozen of them. Beautiful big, heavy, books. Love the art in them.Wonderful to casually page through, like I have time to casually page through anything anymore.

I do almost all of my visual research on the web now. I have directories full of art samples. I find myself going to the books less and less often for research. Either because of sloth or…well mainly because of sloth. This will not be an easy task but I need to clear the overstuffed shelves, the stacks on tables, the piles on the floor.

I’ve done this with CD’s and DVD’s and records and cassettes. Media storage nightmares all of them. I have three or four comic book cartons that need to go too. I’ve managed to ignore them, stick them in the back of the studio, move them to different corners, but honestly – it’s time. I realized I haven’t looked at what’s in those boxes for many, many years. Some I don’t think have been opened since I moved from Wisconsin to LA. Oh my. I feel even older now.

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A real Graphic Novel – By Gil Kane

About a Book Wednesday stops in the groovy 1970′s this week. Another bit of ephemera from my dad’s studio. This is a graphic novel from 1971. And oddly enough, it’s in traditional paperback size. It’s by Gil Kane, who has quite a history in comics.

Blackmark is a great example of 1970′s sci-fi, fantasy. How can it be anything else when the cover tells you, ” First in a series of daring adventures featuring Blackmark in the primitive world of the future.” And judging by the cover imagery they mean sometime in the 1980′s. That’s when swords were big. Anyway, I don’t believe there were any more published in this format. And it’s easy to see why.

The artwork is vital and competent, but the book is sunk because of the typesetting and design. As you can see from the spread below, the drawings are not so elegantly placed in-between large blocks of truly ugly typesetting leaving unnerving white space throughout the narrative.

Typesetting in the 1970′s wasn’t the image wrapping fun of using InDesign in 2012. I’m not 100% sure if this was issued first in a magazine format from Marvel or not, but some of the images are split so oddly by the spine that I can’t believe they are actually planned double page spreads. I’m sure there is a comic book expert that knows more about this book. But it’s definitely another step in the world of ‘graphic novels’. On the title page they refer to it as “A new fusion of images and words in an action book – the next step forward in pictorial fiction.”

In my experience, at least in the U.S., Will Eisner is often credited with being the artist/writer who created or at least popularized the term ‘graphic novel’. His A Contract with God came out in 1978. And Eisner himself credits Lynd Ward for inspiration. I’ve discussed on this blog before a wonderful original printing of Lynd Ward’s Vertigo that I have.

But in paperback format this particular combination of words and pictures leaves a lot to be desired. It neither celebrates the excellent artwork or makes the story easy to digest. Reading it feels a bit too much like homework. And this posting is feeling too much like a research paper, so I’m out of here!

You can pick yourself up a copy for yourself on ebay if you wish.

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It’s all about them…Characters before plot.

Character vs. plot. Like the friction between dogs and cats, liberals and conservatives, bakers and monkeys, there will never be a quiet moment between which is more important to fiction. Actually I think most people agree it’s character. But I liked my intro.

Every editor, every development executive, my mom – they will all tell you that characters are more important than plot. That a great book, a great TV series (for kids or adults) a great film – is about characters the audience likes and wants to spend time with. Those characters can be under the ocean, in space, in a desert, they can be dogs, humans or monsters. But the characters need to draw you in.

So recently I was a little surpirsed when friends were sharing ideas for kids books and they all started with the location/setting/plot device. I was introduced to strange worlds, bizarre underground caves, even an old western town – before I met anyone. It’s a lonely way to talk about a story. By placing that information first, the creators seemed to be admitting that character is taking a back seat to location and/or plot.

Whenever I am trying to flesh out a story I start writing about the main character, or one of the main characters. (writing 101, I know). I write a page about the character before I ever TALK about where they are or sometimes, what they are. And when I develop the story I try and look back at this start and remember that no matter where the story takes this character, the character comes first. Their failures, their desires, their resentments. Even in a picture book this can be helpful.

Now that I’ve written this, I will work even harder to make sure I follow it!

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Pocket Book of Science-Fiction

My dad is cleaning out his studio bookshelves and I’m receiving boxes of books. I found this one in the last shipment. It’s from 1943, edited by Donald Wollheim, one of the founders of modern American sci-fi as a writer, editor and fan.

The cover still looks great and has flying cars. Flying cars are always off in the future aren’t they?

The book has a few stories I hadn’t come across before (see below).

Sadly the book is in its last stages. It can still be used, but it’s close to its last read. There is no price on it, though on the back it says “Ship this book to a boy in the armed forces anywhere for-only 3¢”

It’s a Pocket Book Inc. release and doing a bit of research it turns out that Pocket Books produced the first mass-market, pocket-sized paperback books in America. Starting in 1939. Its now a division of Simon and Schuster. I have 25 or 30 old paperbacks I am making my way through. They are next to worthless I suppose but I enjoy them for a lot of reasons. The old paperback smell reminds me of the libraries and of my dad’s studio too. Also the excitement of seeing what was at the time a brand new Big Idea. Paperbacks. Cheap books to bring great literature (or not so great) to everyone. They have a unique energy and display some odd design choices because it was all so new. And science fiction was slowly making its way into the minds of millions of readers. I troll these books looking for early stories by Philip K. Dick and other sci-fi writers that enamored me when I was young.

And how can you beat ‘Fantastic Tales of Super-Science’ across the top.

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School visit and book signing

I got to watch rain dance across the open fields on my way down to Salem last night for a book signing.  I’d like to thank the Morningside Elmentary school for being such a great host. I had a ton of fun meeting creative kids and talking about ‘drawing’ stories.

I was also really excited to be talking to kids about Earthling! for the first time (Thanks to Chronicle Books for some early support for Earthling!) as well as signing favorite copies of The Three Little Aliens and the Big Bad Robot, The Book That Eats People and So You Want To Catch Bigfoot.

Thank you to the staff and parents and students who came out to celebrate books, illustration and storytelling. I saw some wonderful student books in progress and was excited to see so many students creating original tales of monsters, aliens, penguins and lemons!

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iPad picture books, not at bedtime.

My daughter really enjoys working/playing/learning on her iPad. She has a few games, some educational, some just dress-up Barbie type stuff. She has some videos and TV episodes. She likes some of the books on it as well. But she does not like using the iPad when it comes to bedtime.

I think there are a few reasons why, but I find it surprising given how much she likes using the device at other times. So here is a short list of my completely unscientific (AKA – guesses) reasons as to why she still prefers traditional picture books at bedtime.

1.The light from the iPad doesn’t calm her down. Even a story about bedtime is still radiating light and energy to build the images on the screen. This isn’t particularly relaxing.

2. The traditional books are more tactile. She flips back and forth EASILY. Even though you can ‘flip’ back and forth on the iPad, it’s not the same sense of before and after. It’s further abstracted because of the device.

3. Traditional picture books are usually bigger. And the larger images and compositions with white space are more fun to look at in general.

4. She has a lot of dead tree books books to pick from. Even with a well stocked iPad, there’s no comparison. We have books we own, she has library books from school and the city library. She sometimes raids my book shelves for even more picture books.

I happy to see that she still relates to traditional books even though I have not tried to push her away from the iPad in anyway. I think the traditional format of a book is still the best fit for bedtime. But, when we travel on an airplane I wouldn’t trade the iPad for anything!

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Eat the Books

I read that Taco Bell is making taco shells out of Dorito chips. Talk about making a food product even less appealing…but it got me thinking. Perhaps the answer to all the problems the traditional book format is having can be solved by making – edible books. Print them on Doritos. Licensed Barbie books would be on bubble gum pages. Anything by Lemony Snicket would taste like lemon of course.

Barnes & Noble could become a lunch destination. The remainder bins would be take-out.

If you get 3 chapters into a book and lose your interest, no problem, just eat it. Let’s see an e-book do that.

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I look on with bemused detachment…

Over the weekend we stopped into the local Barnes & Noble. It was nice to see the store busy, if not exactly packed. The coffee shop was full and they had a nice selection of toys and games to go along with the books. The kids book section was well stocked. About 30% of the floor space was left to ‘classics’. Books originally released at least 20 years ago. So that limits how much floor space they have for new titles. They had a large display area of picture books, with covers out (YEAH!) and had a bazillion middle grade novels/illustrated novels. Vampires, nerds, monsters, kids investigating mysteries…it was completely overwhelming. I had no idea that there were so many of these type of books. After about 10 minutes they all ran together. Reading about a half dozen first pages also brought home the sameness of many of them. But most of them looked great. Beautiful art and plenty of funny character names…

I glanced at the picture books, but if I spend too much time I tend to get kind of depressed. A few of the things that really bug me jump out – overly cute stuff and books where the characters all lack expression. Characters have basically the same look on every page. A look of bemused detachment. The characters seem to suffer from some sort of post modern malaise. They stare into the woods, or at one another like sullen teenagers. Favorite topics revolve around losing ones mittens, or a hat, or wanting to dance or something equally wry. There’s something a tad disingenuous with them though. They don’t seem to capture much about the spirit of younger kids that I pick up on, but they capture plenty of ironic detachement.

But overall I was glad to see what appears to be a fairly healthy book store. We ended up buying a book/game combo thing for an upcoming birthday. My daughter wanted a  DVD, but honestly, it’s easier to just order it on iTunes than have another chunk of plastic in the house, so they lost out on that sale.

But overall, the book store was still alive. That made me happy.

 

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