by Françoise Mouly
Founder, publisher, editorial director of TOON Books
"I’m still shocked that they gave me this award. Good night, Planet is a very dear book for me. My daughter Emma inspired it, so this just goes to show that working from very profound love can only bring joy. I’m thankful to everyone at Toon Books and my editor extraordinaire, Françoise Mouly. Merci, Françoise!"
--Liniers upon receiving the Eisner award for Best Publication for Early Readers
In the Spring of 2008, we launched TOON Books, a new category of Early Reader Beginner comics by some of the greatest practitioners of the field. And now, ten years later, Ricardo Siri Liniers stands on the stage at San Diego's Comics Con, triumphantly receiving the Eisner Award for "Best Publication for Early Readers,” one more honor accorded to his latest TOON book, Good Night, Planet. Here's a brief history of how we got to that glorious moment:
It was in a Parisian comic book shop, back in 2011, that I first saw Ricardo's work, a French anthology of his daily strip, Macanudo, published by the Montreal publisher, La Pasteque. I immediately fell in love with Liniers' vivacious cartoon line and his offbeat humor. I rejoiced in the adventures of the young girl, Henrietta, and her cat named Fellini, as well as the myriad of other strips involving penguins, camels, a monster named Olga, and men with hats.
As soon as I got back to New York, I got in touch with Liniers who was living in Buenos Aires, Argentina at the time. He said he was thrilled to hear from me -- he had grown up with RAW, the magazine I published and co-edited in the 80's, and was a huge admirer of Maus and of the work of my husband, Art Spiegelman. We found out we had many areas of overlap, including the fact that together with his wife, Angie DeCampo, Liniers published comics in Argentina.
It was in a Parisian comic book shop, back in 2011, that I first saw Ricardo's work, a French anthology of his daily strip, Macanudo, published by the Montreal publisher, La Pasteque. I immediately fell in love with Liniers' vivacious cartoon line and his offbeat humor. I rejoiced in the adventures of the young girl, Henrietta, and her cat named Fellini, as well as the myriad of other strips involving penguins, camels, a monster named Olga, and men with hats.
As soon as I got back to New York, I got in touch with Liniers who was living in Buenos Aires, Argentina at the time. He said he was thrilled to hear from me -- he had grown up with RAW, the magazine I published and co-edited in the 80's, and was a huge admirer of Maus and of the work of my husband, Art Spiegelman. We found out we had many areas of overlap, including the fact that together with his wife, Angie DeCampo, Liniers published comics in Argentina.
When I told Ricardo I wanted to excerpt the Macanudo strips that worked best for kids (mostly the Henrietta and Fellini ones,) he demurred. They were part of a ten-year body of work and he wanted to see them published all together--that was later arranged by Claudia Bedrick at Enchanted Lion, who has been publishing the book versions of the Macanudo strips in English since 2014.
For TOON, Liniers proposed to create a new book, an idea I accepted enthusiastically. He first offered what became What There Is Before There Is Anything There: A Scary Story (later published in English by Groundwood Books.) I loved it, but turned it down for TOON because I wanted Ricardo to use his talents to make comics for kids, not a traditional picture book with written captions. When I suggested he find inspiration in fatherhood, he told me about a rainy-day interaction he had observed between his two daughters, the older and more verbal Matilda, and the younger, more trusting Clementina.
For TOON, Liniers proposed to create a new book, an idea I accepted enthusiastically. He first offered what became What There Is Before There Is Anything There: A Scary Story (later published in English by Groundwood Books.) I loved it, but turned it down for TOON because I wanted Ricardo to use his talents to make comics for kids, not a traditional picture book with written captions. When I suggested he find inspiration in fatherhood, he told me about a rainy-day interaction he had observed between his two daughters, the older and more verbal Matilda, and the younger, more trusting Clementina.
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That's how we got started on what became "The Big Wet Balloon," Liniers first book in the U.S.A., which TOON published to great acclaim in the Fall of 2013. It received starred reviews in Kirkus and Horn Book. It was an Eisner nominee and was picked as one of Parents Magazine's 10 Best Children's Books. Flushed with this success, a Macanudo strip organically coalesced into becoming the next TOON book. Ricardo sent me the horizontal strips as he was working on them and publishing them in the Argentine newspaper, The Nation, which I worked into a book layout. Since the story was again inspired by the time he had spent with his children, Ricardo dedicated Written and Drawn to his three daughters. (The youngest daughter, Emma, was born in the Fall of 2013, while Ricardo was on his first U.S. book tour, and I still shudder at the memory of desperately trying to arrange his return home to Angie with a hastily arranged epic flight, which nearly ended both his career and family life at dawn in a stop over in the Andes...)
| In 2014, we started featuring Liniers on the cover of The New Yorker, where he continues to contribute covers and cartoons, including an hilarious take on our mascot, Eustace Tilley, "manspreading" in the subway.  In September of 2015, Art and I had the great pleasure of visiting Ricardo and Angie in Buenos Aires. |   |
Liniers (center) and Art (right), in Angie and Ricardo's Buenos Aires home (note the full-size blackboard wall!)
Left to right: Jose Muñoz, (another great Argentine cartoonist and RAW alumni,) Art and Liniers in Buenos Aires
Published in the Fall of 2015, Written and Drawn by Henrietta was a raging success. It received five starred reviews, was a Kirkus Prize Nominee for Young Reader's Literature, received a Mildred L. Batchelder Award Honor, a Little Maverick Star, and is on the ALSC Notable Children's Books and Graphic Novels Reading List as well as the The Horn Book Magazine's Fanfare List. Its success helped pave the way for Ricardo, Angie and their three daughters to move to America.
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The Liniers family's point of entry in the U.S. was another of TOON's anchor points on the continent: James Sturm's marvelous' Center for Cartoon Studies in White River Junction, Vermont, where they were settled in the Fall of 2016. Ricardo is a fountain of great ideas, so a daily strip is a perfect vehicle for his seemingly unquenchable imagination and appetite for hard work. King Features will start publishing Macanudo daily here in Fall 2018. While he had other story ideas, it's again when talking about his, Angie's, and the girls' love for the New England house they moved into, and hearing him marvel at the nights when they all went out to look at all the stars in the Northern Hemisphere, that a new book was born. Good Night, Planet is a celebration of the family new life in Vermont and New Hampshire. Then three-year old Emma gave the book its core when she named her new cuddly animal: Planet.
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Published in the Fall of 2017 in English and Spanish, showered with honors and starred reviews, Good Night, Planet is the first TOON book to be awarded an Eisner award, though many have been nominated. TOON pioneered the form and launched the first Beginning Readers in comics form 10 years ago, and all this year, we're celebrating the strides we've made in getting comics accepted as a medium for literacy and literature during that decade. There couldn't have been a more fitting moment for the world of comics to finally honor a TOON book with an Eisner award!
So please join us in singing over the rooftops:
So please join us in singing over the rooftops:
Hooray for Ricardo – and his whole family!
Hooray for everyone at TOON!
and HOORAY for comics for kids!
Hooray for everyone at TOON!
and HOORAY for comics for kids!
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