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North Adams Transcript: Three excellent books for kids
May 9, 2008
The second release in Toon Books' new line of easy reader graphic novels, "Silly Lilly," is a charming affair by French author/illustrator Agnès Rosenstiehl. In a series of seasonal sketches, a young girl named Lilly is followed through her reactions to the changes.
That's a funny thing about being a kid -- before you are really aware of time, of real change in the sense that an adult is, you are aware of the flow and passing in one very sensual way and that is the shift of seasons. Seasons, like anything else, are relative and will look and feel different according to where you live -- at the same time, the basics are generally the same and this is structure we teach children.
Seasons, it seems, are the first formal lesson we give in the cycle of life. Lilly gets silly in the park in spring, the beach in summer, the apple orchard in fall, the snow in winter and the playground in spring, bringing the year full circle and, more importantly, transcribing a year of change for not only the earth, but the girl as well.
Rosenstiehl crafts a simple sketch of a graphic novel here, presenting the idea of sequential storytelling in its most base form without making it a pantomime. There is a crafty underbelly to the humor, with slight story tension being brought out in delicate ways.
—TheTranscript.com
Chicago Tribune: For Young Readers
April 19, 2008
Is this a picture book, a graphic novel for preschoolers, or a comic book? Doesn't matter. Just enjoy the simple but dynamite graphics from Agnès Rosenstiehl. It's as if Tintin had gone to preschool.
—Mary Harris Russell, Chicago Tribune Web Edition
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Book Buds Kidlit Reviews: Hum a happy tune
April 18, 2008
TOON Books ran out of copies of their three debut titles before they even hit the shelves the other week. I got an email press release (as I suspect a lot of bloggers did, but I'm too lazy to check Technorati) with a fun quote from the publishers:
"We were in the middle of preparing for launch," says Editorial Director Françoise Mouly, also the Art Editor of The New Yorker, "but I couldn't imagine a more welcome distraction."
Here, here.
I plan to review all three titles, but picked Silly Lilly as my immediate favorite for its understated simplicity and total girl appeal. Like all graphic novels, the story is told in comic format, thought the gap between picture book and graphic novel has all but disappeared. About the only way I didn't know that was, in fact, a picture book is that there's not narration, no text imposed over the art except in Lilly's speech bubbles.
The book breaks into five short vignettes, one for each season plus a bonus Spring. In each, Lilly sets herself a simple task, such as going to the park or the beach or picking apples. And that's it--though every story has its twist at the end, when a sea shell has a tiny inhabitant or a snowball goes astray.
It's all Lilly, and she's all glee and giggles, a pen-and-ink Everygirl who can turn any day into a pleasant adventure.
I'm all for it.
—Book Buds Kidlit Reviews, dadtalk.typepad.com
Sequart.com: The Ideal First Comics: The Toon Book Line
April 7, 2008
Let's begin with SILLY LILLY AND THE FOUR SEASONS, by French children's book author Agnès Rosenstiehl. This is the book I'd first introduce to the youngest readers, perhaps as young as two or three. The concepts and action in this book are simple: Lilly experiences the seasons through a series of activities: playing in the park in spring with her teddy, looking for things in the ocean in the summer, picking apples in the fall, making snowballs in the winter and flying on a swing back in the next spring. The images here are simple and Rosenstiehl's line is warm. That warmth will immediately draw in young readers who are used to similar imagery in books they've seen up to that point in their lives. The panel-to-panel transitions here as Lilly throws a snowball or gets on a swing are simple to understand and will spur on a child's understanding of how movement can be portrayed on the page.
—Rob Clough, Sequart.com
Patriot News
April 4, 2008
A frisky little girl explores the pleasures each change of climate brings. Rosenstiehl uses simple, but charming illustrations and words with he youngest reader in mind.
—Chris Mautner, Patriot News
Kirkus Reviews
April 1, 2008
This graphic-early-reader entry from Toon Books is itself an objet d'art. The slight story, in basic comic-book format, briefly and joyfully bounds through the seasons at the rate of four panels per page. The crisp, bright watercolors depict Lilly, a bouncy, endearing child with black pigtails and a vim for life, as she happily engages each season. In the spring chapter, "Silly Lilly at the Park," she shows her teddy bear want she likes to do at the park: dance, jump, and nap. In the summer, she daintily tiptoes through the shore's shallow water, clad in her red two-piece, finding little treasures and surprising herself with a snail hidden within a shell. Fall is summed up in bite-sized tastes of a sampling of colorful apples. Winter, of course, offers bountiful snow and Lilly's wayward snowballs. Emergent readers will be drawn to Lilly's ebullient perspective and captivated by the uncluttered layout; the easy lesson on the seasons is a bonus.
—Kirkus Reviews
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Publishers Weekly
March 17, 2008
"What is there about Comics that makes children like them so well?" An exasperated schoolteacher posed this question in an article from the 1940s chronicling the uphill battle she and her colleagues were then waging against comic books, which they considered sub-literary fare. The battle lines have long since been redrawn, the graphic novel having attained critical mass and the comics aesthetic having slowly inched its way toward children's literature respectability on the backs of occasional forays into the genre by Maurice Sendak and others, and of more sustained efforts such as the Little Lit series edited by Art Spiegelman and Françoise Mouly. Now New Yorker art director Mouly, with Spiegelman as in-house adviser, takes the field again with the release of the first three titles from Toon Books, an innovative line of early readers presented in comics format.
On the evidence of Rosenstiehl's initial contribution, Dick and Jane may now pack up their things and leave town for good. In this little marvel of distilled storytelling, five wee seasonal vignettes, starting and ending with spring, place a spry young girl in familiar situations that give free rein to her curiosity and love of action. As Lilly plays in the park, finds a snail at the shore, samples a basket of apples, hurls snowballs and swings on a swing, her bright thoughts and warblings appear overhead in speech balloons, in words of one to three syllables. Twice, a teddy bear serves as the straight man; in the winter scene, for example, he impassively takes a snowball on the chin ("Oops! Sorry, Teddy! I was only kidding!"). This comic moment, like others that Rosenstiehl extracts from her rigorously pared-down materials, draws us directly into Lilly's emotional world, where attention is routinely paid to everything, from a lowly dandelion on up. To know Lilly is to know what she has to say.
Lilly, who is already familiar to children of the author's native France as Mimi Cracra, is Little Lulu with dance lessons. Apple-cheeked and graceful, she's nobody's fool, and her expressive action poses double as telltale clues to the child poised to begin decoding the printed word independently. Rosenstiehl's uncomplicated layouts--two panes of equal size per page, four per spread--and minimalist backdrops likewise keep the focus where it belongs: on the adventure of taking the measure of everyday things, whether it be a tiny sea creature washed up by a wave or the words "I'm flying." Ages 4-up
—Leonard S. Marcus, Publishers Weekly
School Library Journal: Graphic Novels Rule!: The latest and greatest comics for young kids
March 2008
Spunky Lilly dances, skips, and jumps through the pages of this charming book as she explores each season's distinct pleasures, which include springtime in a park, a beach in summer, apple picking in the fall, and snow in the wintertime. With its simple text and illustrations, this comic is perfect for new readers.
—Michele Gorman, School Library Journal
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