Linkfest: Babymouse and book deals

Newsarama’s Zack Smith talks to Matthew and Jennifer Holm about Babymouse, which Robin Brenner found to be one of the top-circulating graphic novels for kids in her library system, although it’s less well known among adult comics bloggers. One commenter complains that the book shows "little artistic skill," but others chime in to point out that it’s actually more sophisticated than it looks at first glance.

Lisa Brown of Animal Inventory Blog interviews Nick Abadzis, creator of Laika.

Xaviar Xerxes talks to Phil Foglio, creator of Girl Genius, at COMIXtalk.

Publishers Weekly Comics Week features a preview of Gunnerkrigg Court: Orientation, which itself is a print collection of the Gunnerkrigg Court webcomic.

For the seriously wonky, Visual Linguist Neil Cohn discusses continuity across comics panels, an important aspect of decoding comics:

For instance, kids below four years old seem to have no ability to make coherent sense of connecting juxtaposed panels — they can recognize the meaningful content of the things in each panel, but they can’t seem to connect them as part of a narrative sequence. (They also seem unable to recognize any representations in the images that are predicated on understanding the causation between panels).

The Graphic Classroom blogger Chris Wilson writes about using comics in the classroom for 417 magazine.

Svetlana Chmakova, creator of Dramacon and Nightschool, will be at the YALSA conference this weekend.

Barry Deutsch has just signed with Abrams to publish an expanded version his YA comic Hereville: How Mirka Got Her Sword, which is currently running online as a webcomic. The Washington Post described it as “what you get when you cross Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Isaac Bashevis Singer," which sounds about right.

Also, Scott Campbell, one of the contributors to the Flight anthology, has signed with Simon and Schuster to illustrate a children’s book, East Dragon, West Dragon.

Colleen Mondor looks over a slew of YA graphic novels at Bookslut.

New website alert: Everybody’s linking to Graphic Novel Reporter, although the site hasn’t actually gone live yet; you can sign up for their newsletter now, though.

Reviews:

Johanna Draper Carlson on October’s Archie Comics (Comics Worth Reading)
Johanna Draper Carlson on October’s Archie Digests (Comics Worth Reading)
Julie on vol. 1 of The Flat Earth/Exchange (Manga Maniac Cafe)
Michael May on Book 1 of The Fog Mound (Blog@Newsarama)
Bill Sherman on vol. 1 of Hatter M – The Looking Glass Wars (Blogcritics)
Kevin Hodgson on The McCain and Obama Presidential Comics (The Graphic Classroom)
Chris Wilson on The McCain and Obama Presidential Comics (The Graphic Classroom)
Billy Aguiar on vol. 1 of Mixed Vegetables (Prospero’s Manga)
Leroy Douresseaux on vol. 2 of Sugar Princess: Skating to Win (The Comic Book Bin)
Billy Aguiar on Wanted (Prospero’s Manga)
Christopher Mautner on Zot! (Panels and Pixels)

Filed under: Uncategorized