Stinky

In our family, comic books rule. Steve has his childhood collection of Tin Tin, I have my Tank Girl posters and D loves his Lego Bionicle comics. But when Toon Books sent me a copy of Stinky, D quickly set aside his Lego comics and snatched it up.

Husband and wife team, Francoise Mouly (New Yorker art editor) and Art Spiegelman (creator of 1980's RAW comics) have started making comic books for kids again! It seems for a long time that comics were geared more for teens and adult collectors, so I'm very happy that these two had the genius idea to bring back the comic book as a way to teach little ones to read.

RAW JUNIOR books are a sturdier hardcover variety of comic. Out of their first three books, Mo and Jo and Jack and the Box, Stinky is my favorite. It is an easy reader (K-2) with a charming story about a super stinky swamp monster who ends up making friends with the same little boy he had been trying to scare away. The dialog is fun and colorful:

"Kids don't like mucky mud, slimy slugs or smelly monsters like me!" "They eat cake and apples." "Yuck!"

Eleanor Davis is the very talented artist and author of this comic and she's only 25 years old! She keeps a fun art blog and will be featured in the Giant Robot Post It group show in LA from December 13th- January 14th. More than 95 artists will have their sticky note illustrations stuck on the wall. I wish I could be there to see and purchase some of my favorite artists works.

I love Eleanor's style and soft color palette choice for this book and I'm really hoping to catch her for an interview soon.

This is one of my favorite illustrations I scanned from page 6. Look at the lower right hand corner and you'll see a little hedgehog greeting Stinky with a clothes pin clamped to his nose!