Comic Boom - Comics in Education with Hannah Tunnicliffe and Erica Harrison

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Hello, Hannah and Erica, and welcome to Comic Boom.
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Hello.
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Welcome to the podcast.
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Thank you so much for coming onto the show.
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first of all, I always start the podcast by asking, guests to tell us a little bit about their journey as a reader.
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I don't know if you were comics readers as children.
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Hannah, can you start us off?
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did your, how did you become a writer for comics?
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Where did that interest come from?
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Can you tell us a little bit about your reading diet as a child?
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My reading diet.
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I love it.
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I didn't actually read a lot of comments, comics as a kid.
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I was thinking about this previously and, I think possibly because a lot of.
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Them seemed to be aimed at boys.
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Mm.
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and you know, you had protagonists like Tinton and Asterisk.
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and I think when I look back on it, I actually really liked female protagonists and I was drawn to them the most and I didn't really see a lot of them in comics and just comics in general seemed to be sort of dominated by the boys and didn't seem to be kind of a zone for me.
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so I think, you know, as a kid I was really into.
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Female protagonists whether it was like Charlotte's Web or Anna Gr Gables, babysitter's Club, famous five, that kind of thing where there were girls in the books doing cool stuff.
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and so for me, it wasn't until I was an adult, I was thinking back, I think my first graphic novel, was Persepolis by Marjon Satrapi, which I absolutely adored.
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and then I kind of devoured a lot of, Lucy nicely, uh, fun home by Alison Bechdel mouse, and got really into graphic novels.
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so yeah, it was a, I was a late, I was a late bloomer, a late something to the comic, and graphic novel.
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World.
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but I'd like to think that that's, not the case for, I've got three daughters and I don't think that's the case for them.
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A lot of them have read the graphic novels of the Babysitters Club.
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They've read Smile and Guts and they, they can see there's much more of a world for them.
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as girls in the comics space now, I think.
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Yeah, I completely agree.
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It's, yeah, for me as well and my diet, my reading diet, now is really focused on sort of women's stories and yeah, there seems to be more like the Rayna TGA ma books you were just talking about, those kind of autobiographical real world stories.
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with, with female protagonists and definitely seems to have increased.
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Erica, how about you?
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What, what was
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I would say quite similar, but.
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Yeah, definitely female protagonist.
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I was obsessed with anything, Enid Blyton.
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So I started with the Faraway tree and read every single one of those.
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And then I think I moved on to Secret Seven, read every single one of those.
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Then Famous five, and it was Mallory Towers.
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So for me, that was my reading diet.
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I love that we're calling it that.
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Um, and, but my brother, was.
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What we would definitely call a reluctant reader, which is kind of interesting'cause that's where we're aiming our books at.
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And so his reading material was the Beano and the Dandy, and he couldn't really.
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Digest anything bigger format, longer format, or was interested in anything that looked like a book?
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So for my mom and dad, like those comics were a bit of a savior because my brother devoured them.
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Like, so he would get his weekly, B and that would keep him going for, for the week.
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So that was how he.
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Learn to love to read in his way.
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So I've always had comics in the house, but would never have really read them myself, but would totally have not, not really, no.
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But I kind of loved the characters from those comics because of his love for the, for the Beano.
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so more recently, comics have come into my life because of my daughter and, and possibly.
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My first real introduction to Flying Eye books was through her with Hilda.
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and so I have read and loved Hilda with Mabel and
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love Hilda more than my children.
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I think
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I think I do too.
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So she absolutely loves Hilda.
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She loves the comic versions and she also loves now the TV show.
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And, she has rewatched the whole show twice now, all, all of the seasons.
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So, so my love for comics has now come with her and she is now obviously onto much more, kind of like wordier, lengthier graphic novels, and she gets through them so quickly.
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And my love for those just grows and that format and that way of selling a, telling a story.
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So it was really exciting to get to do that with Stanley.
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Yeah.
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exactly.
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Which we are gonna come onto.
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I'm just gonna hold off for a
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Yes, yes, yes, yes.
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though before we start talking about Stanley, which is, has been very popular in my house to say, um.
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talk a little bit, Erica, about your journey to becoming an illustrator and just thinking we could tie that into thinking about education and, what role did school or home as you were growing up, come come into that, you being able to see yourself in that role?
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'cause I think that that's something that, can be really challenging for children to see themselves, as somebody that creates books because they just appear as a item on the shelf.
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And you, you don't necessarily think about the people that are making them.
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So I'm just really interested in and how that journey
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Well, I don't think I thought about how people were making them when I.
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that I love to draw and I think my love for drawing probably came about around the same time that those Beano and Dandy comics were coming into my house.
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And at the time as well, like the Simpsons was just really kicking off.
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So I was drawing cartoon characters based on either comics or those cartoons.
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And, so I, I remember I.
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Started drawing characters for money at school.
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I would draw Simpson's characters.
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of entrepreneurial
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I would,
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I never did anything for money.
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don't even know how it really came about.
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I started drawing Simpson's characters for 20 p time.
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So, um, people would ask for a Homer, or a Marge, or a Lisa, or, And I would just copy.
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I think my brother might have been getting the collector cards for them or something.
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And so I would copy those in a bigger format and sell them for 20 pence.
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so, and then I think my love of drawing was obviously nurtured a lot at home.
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Like there was always lots of drawing materials and, my mom and dad weren't artists.
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My dad is a terrible drawer.
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My mom probably is better, but it wasn't like I was learning to draw from her.
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I had lots of how to draw books at home, so I used to copy from those.
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And then I had an amazing teacher, um, in the last couple of years of primary school.
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She joined our school and she was an Art based primary school teacher.
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So she had trained as an artist herself and then used loads of it in her lessons.
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So anything we were studying would have an element of creating something in order to learn about something.
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So if it was a history project, we'd do big posters that would go on the wall and like make these large kind of like diagrams or, I don't know, crowns for something historical or I, I, so I really remember her.
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Making the lessons fun through art.
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So I've, always, been nurtured I guess through, through teaching.
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and then at high school, I think I just suddenly realized I could, could draw and so like really draw.
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And so I was, I, I learned to paint and I was doing kind of.
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Portrait paintings and things by the time I was leaving high school.
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And then I studied art at a level and had two amazing art teachers.
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and at that point I was really going towards probably a, fine arts and thinking I was going to be a painter.
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And then I went and did my art foundation at Norwich School of Art and still think I was gonna be a fine artist.
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But I think I realized I didn't quite fit that mold.
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and was maybe taking things too literally, with projects and I didn't have quite the, I don't know, artistic thinking behind the projects that would get me.
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Where I kind of would need to go if I was to really focus on that.
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And I just, when, uh, at Art college you do.
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Kind of, they kind of rotate, what areas you study.
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and so at that point I started doing, graphic arts for the first time.
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And I, it wasn't anything that I had even realized was a thing until Art Foundation and for one of those graphic art projects and illustrator and uh, paper engineer came and did a project with us called Robert Crowder.
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And he does these amazing, A, b, c, children's popup books and he set us a project, I think it was a two week project, art school to create these, paper engineered, children's Illustrated, spreads, and kind of something clicked then that was like I could draw and I.
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Draw for children and I'm good at it and I could, it could maybe be a job without realizing that there ever was one until then the end of the project, like, He kind of like assessed what we'd done and brought up some of the pieces, and he showcased my piece that I'd done that week and I will never forget it.
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he, he said to the class that he had no doubt that at some point in my life I would draw for children for a living so that was an amazing boost and it was then that I realized that I should move from thinking about fine arts and studying graphic arts.
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So I did graphic arts at Leeds Metropolitan University and I specialized in children's illustration from the moment I got there and learned to book bind and learnt typography and, Came out knowing that I wanted to be a children's book designer and illustrator, but still not really realizing that that could be a job.
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but hoping it was.
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And then, at the end of my course, I started reading the ads in The Guardian.
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Like there used to be a big thing at that point.
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It used to be a supplement thing that came out on a Tuesday.
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That told you all the creative jobs in the industry and I applied for, two jobs.
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Didn't get the first one, but did get my second, which was, children's Book Designer Osborne Publishing.
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So that was the start of my career.
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And even then, I still didn't realize that I, I was like, oh, I wonder what I'll be doing there.
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Maybe they'll get me doing some photocopying or, you know, like just helping out.
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And like within my first week, I'm kind of making.
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Things for a fairy make and do book out and toilet rolls and boxes and glitter and, so yeah, that was.
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It was an, yeah, it was an incredible job.
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I, I, it exists and that is actually a thing.
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You can go into a place of work, a serious office in London and there will be somebody at a desk somewhere making bits and pieces out of stuff you can find around the home.
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So yeah, that was how my.
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I got into it, but I wouldn't have known like why, who would think that that's a job.
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So it's kind of just like a series of events that took me there and I was incredibly lucky to get that job.
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It sounds like there's been some Really inspirational people along the way as well, which has been, that's really nice to hear that and just to know that because it's the sort of thing that you at, like when you are leading a class, you don't really realize the things that you say or the validation that you give people and the impact it can have.
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It's
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Yeah, amazingly so that that one comment changed the course of my art career.
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I think really it made me realize that what I was good at wasn't what I realized I was good at until somebody told me.
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So, yeah, it was important.
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And Hannah, what about you in writing?
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Was, was being a writer something that you visualized as a child
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I mean, I'm still just, I'm just trying to get over, Erica's 20 p per Simpson's illustration.
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Were you writing stories for people
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I,
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because if you're not, if you weren't.
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I just wished Erica, that we'd known each other as kids.
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'cause I feel like we really could have.
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Who knows what we could have done.
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Right.
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you know?
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Um, together imagine, 50 p maybe.
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anyway.
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No, I, I, I always say to people that I feel like the idea of being a writer as a profession, I completely agree with Erica.
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I don't think I fully.
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Grasped it as a possibility.
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Obviously I knew people did do it, but that didn't mean that people like me could do it.
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and I knew that I could write, but it also felt kind of slightly, this is gonna sound odd, I think, but sort of slightly dangerous as in, If I tried to, it was sort of like the last trick in the bag.
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So I studied human resources and organizational psychology, and I had a corporate career, because that's the sort of thing that normal people do.
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and it means that you can make money and, you know, have a family and blah, blah, blah.
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so yeah, to write felt like the last trick in the bag If I tried to write properly, and I, and I failed.
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Then I, it was like that I'd used up all my possibly secret talents I was depleted and that would be it.
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And it just felt a bit scary actually to kind of properly, think about writing as a job and actually properly exploring it.
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'cause there is, and I'm sure Erica would attest to this too, there's such vulnerability in actually putting your creative work out there for judgment and assessment and, you know, is it.
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was it not?
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And so writing sort of fell into my lap in a way because I had resigned from a job, in human resources.
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So I was the HR director for a massive business in Macau, China.
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And I'd resigned from that job.
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And the only other kind of work I could realistically get was HR human resources work, and another.
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Similar company.
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I didn't take that option and I just started to write as a personal project.
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and that manuscript that I ended up writing became, the first novel I had published, which was The Color of Tea, but by Pan Macmillan.
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So it was just, yeah, a series of fortunate events I guess that led to that.
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and probably the.
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that I didn't have very many other options, if I wanted to exit the human resources world.
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And fact that it was kind of a whim felt like a little bit less pressure.
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yeah.
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So I think I sort of tricked myself into it slightly.
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Yeah, it's hard to, when you've built up a career be in a really senior role, must be hard to step away from that to visualize yourself as something so completely different.
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Yeah, I mean, I think in, I think it, it's a full circle back to being much more the kind of person I was as a kid.
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So I think that the corporate career was more of a, more of a diversion from my authentic self.
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So to come back to it feels great, although as I say, like it is vulnerable and it is hard and it doesn't pay much and it's quite a slog and all of those things, but the content of the work.
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Feels very aligned.
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and then in terms of kids books or writing for children, the first time I had a go at that was with an orphanage that was based in Macau where I was living, and they had an origin story that I thought would be amazing as a picture book.
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And so, so that's something that I worked on.
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And it wasn't.
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And that book was self-published and it was used as a fundraising tool and a gift to donors who donated to, cradle of Hope, which is the name of the orphanage.
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And then, um, yeah, it wasn't really until I.
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Erica and I for fortuitously met at the school gate, that we, that I started thinking about sort of writing for kids.
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yeah, it just sort of all came together.
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So I dunno if you know that story very well.
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Do you know that story very well about how Erica and I started to.
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and that just super excited me because frequently when writers and illustrators are on the podcast, it is the first time they've ever met.
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and so at which blows my
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Seriously.
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But I guess'cause if it's a publisher that's put them together.
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Yeah.
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they, they've never actually like had a conversation.
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So I love, this is very exciting that you know
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Yeah, it is.
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tell me.
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Yeah, no, unfortunately Erica knows me very, very well and sees me all the time.
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Poor Erica.
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Yeah.
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Not unfortunately at all.
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I think it's what makes what we do works so well.
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Like, and I think our book is testament to that.
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I mean, it could have gone totally the other way.
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Like, I dunno, it could have been the worst book ever,
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A
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Yeah.
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but it was, I don't think it's, anyway, you, you say the beginning, you, you explained the beginnings'cause it was yours to start with.
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Hannah.
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Okay, I'll start.
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I'll start and
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Yeah.
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gonna pass over to
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Okay.
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Yeah, I'm ready.
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is, this is how we work, Lucy.
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We just, this is, we're a team.
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so when I was, I was down, I was having, I was holidaying somewhere, holidaying down in Queenstown, which is in the south island of New Zealand, and I saw this.
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Pack.
00:19:36.875 --> 00:19:45.306
It was like a spy adventure for kids that they could take around Queenstown and solve the clues and kind of a fam little family adventure.
00:19:46.115 --> 00:19:47.286
I thought, that's so cool.
00:19:47.286 --> 00:19:58.655
We could do something like that in the suburb where we live, the neighborhood where we live, which is Davenport, and we could use a lot of the historical buildings and information that's.
00:19:58.941 --> 00:20:02.661
You know, it's quite an old, well for New Zealand, it's an old village.
00:20:03.141 --> 00:20:07.537
And we could do it as a fundraising project for, the primary school where my daughters go to school.
00:20:08.406 --> 00:20:15.976
so designed this thing, and was trying to find somebody to work on it with me as an illustrator and designer.
00:20:16.875 --> 00:20:24.465
And Erica had very stupidly, um, illustrated another fundraising project for the primary school.
00:20:25.215 --> 00:20:37.276
And so of course I saw it and got really excited and stalked her mercilessly and figured out like who she was and like where she lived and you know, the names of your ex-boyfriends and whatnot.
00:20:37.276 --> 00:20:37.935
And, um.
00:20:38.165 --> 00:20:38.496
Yeah.
00:20:38.496 --> 00:20:40.865
Got in touch and said, do you wanna get involved in this?
00:20:41.346 --> 00:20:57.066
And I had this idea of family trail, all very lo-fi and Erica completely elevated the whole thing because she said with her background at Osborne, she said, what if we make it trail around Davenport and an activity book, we could also put an A three map.
00:20:57.395 --> 00:21:00.905
So the product by the end was the most beautiful, is the most beautiful.
00:21:00.905 --> 00:21:01.895
You can still purchase it.
00:21:02.404 --> 00:21:06.724
Product with an A three map of the village with the walking trail on it.
00:21:06.815 --> 00:21:10.325
A sealed section for the answer to the whole mystery.
00:21:10.684 --> 00:21:12.964
It's called the Great Davenport History Mystery.
00:21:13.048 --> 00:21:15.718
and a little branded pencil in the package as well.
00:21:15.718 --> 00:21:17.097
All sort of cell wrapped.
00:21:17.188 --> 00:21:18.748
It is absolutely gorgeous.
00:21:18.811 --> 00:21:23.424
and as part of that, Erica designed this little detective dog character.
00:21:24.105 --> 00:21:28.154
Well, I should interject just there to say it was originally a cat.
00:21:28.154 --> 00:21:31.545
Can you imagine it would've been a totally different story.
00:21:32.025 --> 00:21:37.035
So, um, the cat quite quickly became a dog because I was like, of course it's gotta be a dog.
00:21:37.035 --> 00:21:38.505
He sniffs out the clues.
00:21:38.515 --> 00:21:38.954
better than cats
00:21:39.710 --> 00:21:39.930
Mm.
00:21:43.767 --> 00:21:44.116
agree.
00:21:44.541 --> 00:21:46.582
Yeah, I am afraid you're talking to a cat owner.
00:21:48.801 --> 00:21:49.132
I on your side.
00:21:49.467 --> 00:21:52.017
So yeah, he, he became Detective Stanley.
00:21:52.047 --> 00:21:56.426
So he is the protagonist of the Davenport History Mystery.
00:21:56.797 --> 00:22:05.467
And at that point he had a little sidekick of a AKA Waka, which is a little New Zealand bird with a fan tail.
00:22:05.467 --> 00:22:07.507
And he, they flit about, and they're absolutely.
00:22:07.852 --> 00:22:08.602
Gorgeous.
00:22:08.842 --> 00:22:12.261
And he had this little, I guess he was like Watson at that point.
00:22:12.261 --> 00:22:14.092
He had a little bowler hat, this bird.
00:22:14.692 --> 00:22:21.922
And those two characters were the guys that took you around the trail of the history mystery of Davenport.
00:22:22.521 --> 00:22:23.474
And yeah.
00:22:23.474 --> 00:22:24.585
I interrupted your story.
00:22:24.585 --> 00:22:27.045
Did you have something else to add, Hannah, before I take it over?
00:22:27.400 --> 00:22:29.779
no, I was, I was gonna pass over to you to say,
00:22:29.865 --> 00:22:30.164
Yeah,
00:22:30.410 --> 00:22:31.220
what happened next.
00:22:31.755 --> 00:22:33.855
well what happened next was.
00:22:34.349 --> 00:22:36.089
We love working on that so much.
00:22:36.089 --> 00:22:38.099
And it came, it turned out so nicely.
00:22:38.130 --> 00:22:40.788
It had real vintage, vibe.
00:22:40.999 --> 00:22:43.368
Uh, we, I used a very limited color palette.
00:22:43.368 --> 00:22:45.949
Stanley was all yellow, black and white.
00:22:46.429 --> 00:22:58.384
And so the whole thing just looks like sort of an activity book of, I dunno, the fifties or something, which is, it kind of felt like it fitted that sort of mystery, detective novel of that genre.
00:22:58.451 --> 00:23:02.771
and we love working on that so much that I was like, well, should we keep going?
00:23:02.862 --> 00:23:10.182
Why don't we take this character and make a bigger activity book and we'll think about self-publishing ourselves.
00:23:10.653 --> 00:23:13.689
or, or thinking about what we're gonna do once we've got a bit more of a product.
00:23:13.989 --> 00:23:21.335
So, we decided to stick with the theme cause we worked with the Davenport, museum to kind of get our facts for the.
00:23:21.430 --> 00:23:21.880
History.
00:23:21.880 --> 00:23:24.640
History, um, we were like, well, let's go a bit bigger.
00:23:24.640 --> 00:23:28.119
Why don't we talk to the Auckland Museum and see what we can find out there?
00:23:28.150 --> 00:23:37.089
So we went and met with the conservative team at the Auckland Museum and went behind the scenes and found out about how they preserve bugs and what special glues they use.
00:23:37.089 --> 00:23:39.910
And we got all very, very excited about that.
00:23:39.910 --> 00:23:43.210
And so we started the same process of how we.
00:23:43.684 --> 00:23:51.615
Created the, history mystery, with the idea that we would have, a series of clues that would lead the child all the way through the book.
00:23:51.704 --> 00:23:56.565
And unless you answered all of the questions, you wouldn't be able to get.
00:23:56.849 --> 00:24:02.990
Your answer because each page would unveil a letter which would spell out a secret clue at the end, and it was gonna have a sealed section again.
00:24:03.259 --> 00:24:12.440
And the idea was that it kind of makes like activity books, sort of, you, you want to achieve it all rather than just dipping in and maybe like doing one page and then giving up on it.
00:24:12.440 --> 00:24:15.049
It was supposed to be an incentive to go all the way through the book.
00:24:15.753 --> 00:24:21.784
So we started that and we'd got, we'd gotten a fairway in probably a quarter of the way through the book with a whole book plan set out.
00:24:21.784 --> 00:24:23.554
And it's like, I feel like we've got enough now.
00:24:23.554 --> 00:24:25.114
We had enough of the book mapped out.
00:24:25.534 --> 00:24:28.263
I'd done about three or four color spreads.
00:24:28.263 --> 00:24:29.703
I had a cover for it.
00:24:29.734 --> 00:24:35.926
so it was called Detective Stanley and the Mystery at the Museum, and I said to Hannah.
00:24:36.707 --> 00:24:51.527
Oh, we, we'd actually gone down the road of thinking about how we could self-publish and realized it was just gonna be way too hard and probably for not much gain and um, especially not if we were to just publish here in New Zealand.
00:24:51.586 --> 00:24:52.846
'cause we were a small market.
00:24:53.237 --> 00:24:56.957
So I, we had all of this beautiful content.
00:24:57.781 --> 00:25:02.251
So it sat for a couple of weeks just thinking, oh, we've made all this now what we're gonna do.
00:25:02.521 --> 00:25:05.642
And then I just thought, well, you know what I mean?
00:25:05.642 --> 00:25:19.461
I stalk all of the publishers all the time anyway, the ones that I really like and I I love flying iBooks and I love their aesthetic and I love the illustrators that they use and how cool the stories are and, and I was like, I mean, this is dream.
00:25:19.491 --> 00:25:26.692
This would be dream scenario, but don't get your hopes up, Hannah, because it's probably not likely, but why don't we do it because we've got this.
00:25:26.721 --> 00:25:28.251
So let's go for it.
00:25:28.612 --> 00:25:36.111
So we put together, a kind of a pitch for our book and included all, everything that we had and, sent it off.
00:25:37.010 --> 00:25:40.671
And then I got a very, this is nighttime, New Zealand time.
00:25:40.671 --> 00:25:48.111
So then we go to bed and then I get a, a very excited text message from Hannah the next morning going, they.
00:25:50.222 --> 00:25:51.423
The next day.
00:25:52.833 --> 00:25:53.462
Wow.
00:25:53.772 --> 00:25:54.373
I was like, what?
00:25:54.613 --> 00:25:56.022
I hadn't even looked at my emails yet.
00:25:58.363 --> 00:26:00.192
Whatcha talking about?
00:26:00.462 --> 00:26:02.022
And Sam had gotten back to us
00:26:02.428 --> 00:26:02.758
actually.
00:26:02.758 --> 00:26:03.897
I was just like at her window.
00:26:05.008 --> 00:26:05.728
Good morning.
00:26:06.583 --> 00:26:10.752
up yet desperate, waiting for me to respond.
00:26:11.353 --> 00:26:12.673
Um, and.
00:26:14.053 --> 00:26:20.157
Sam Arthur at Flying Eye had gotten back to us and he was, it was all a series of coincidences.
00:26:20.157 --> 00:26:31.805
I think they'd apparently had, an acquisitions meeting just earlier that week where they'd had a discussion about how they didn't have a detective and they needed a detective for the.
00:26:31.805 --> 00:26:34.924
the one landed, landed in their.
00:26:35.329 --> 00:26:45.376
He handed in their inbox and and he said, look, it's great, kind of like what you've done, but Flying eye do not do activity books.
00:26:45.376 --> 00:26:46.547
It's not something we publish.
00:26:46.547 --> 00:26:49.247
It's not something we specialize in marketing or anything.
00:26:49.247 --> 00:26:55.156
So, um, it's not something we would take as it is, but we're really interested in his character.
00:26:55.487 --> 00:27:01.406
Do you think you could turn it into a story, specifically for our.
00:27:01.872 --> 00:27:06.996
Younger kind of graphic novel series, which they call graphic readers, for six to nine year olds.
00:27:06.996 --> 00:27:08.390
here's some other stuff we've done.
00:27:08.599 --> 00:27:09.559
Do you wanna give it a go?
00:27:10.099 --> 00:27:12.799
And, uh, we said, yes.
00:27:12.799 --> 00:27:13.940
That sounds great.
00:27:14.029 --> 00:27:15.710
And he's like another email back.
00:27:15.710 --> 00:27:17.210
Can you do it in about three weeks?
00:27:17.240 --> 00:27:19.160
So it reaches our next acquisitions meeting.
00:27:21.440 --> 00:27:21.920
Okay.
00:27:22.819 --> 00:27:25.730
And in the background, me, Hannah, can you write a book in.
00:27:29.819 --> 00:27:30.039
And
00:27:30.125 --> 00:27:31.174
And can you write
00:27:31.234 --> 00:27:34.193
she can write a book in three weeks, I think.
00:27:34.193 --> 00:27:34.913
No, no, no, no, no.
00:27:34.913 --> 00:27:35.364
I,
00:27:35.913 --> 00:27:36.034
pressure.
00:27:36.173 --> 00:27:36.394
Yes.
00:27:36.493 --> 00:27:36.713
It
00:27:36.743 --> 00:27:44.920
she wrote, I think she wrote a book in a week and a half actually, because I had then the other week and a half to put together something, for it.
00:27:45.023 --> 00:27:46.929
Like I think we had to do something.
00:27:47.199 --> 00:27:52.898
Did we have to do like 12 roughs and like a whole page, a whole a page plan for the whole book?
00:27:53.888 --> 00:27:56.499
Roughs and a couple of color, three color spreads.
00:27:57.128 --> 00:27:58.179
Could we do that in three?
00:27:58.328 --> 00:28:02.769
I think it might have been nearly four, but it was definitely not long.
00:28:03.429 --> 00:28:09.818
And we did it and we sent that off and they liked it.
00:28:09.818 --> 00:28:15.848
And so that's how Detective Stanley became, not just a little village detective anymore.
00:28:15.848 --> 00:28:20.949
He became a London detective, a world detective.
00:28:21.009 --> 00:28:21.759
that's brilliant.
00:28:21.759 --> 00:28:22.809
I love that story.
00:28:22.830 --> 00:28:27.904
for people who dunno, Hannah, can you just introduce the book, give a little bit of a synopsis of the story?
00:28:27.954 --> 00:28:29.005
My children really loved it.
00:28:29.484 --> 00:28:32.035
It's been very popular in my house.
00:28:32.065 --> 00:28:34.209
But can you, can you listeners a bit of an intro?
00:28:35.423 --> 00:28:36.324
I would love to.
00:28:36.342 --> 00:28:47.021
yeah, I think as Erica said, it was really exciting for us to be considering a graphic reader, which I had didn't really fully understand until we kind of came into this world.
00:28:47.971 --> 00:28:48.192
Mm.
00:28:48.326 --> 00:28:48.446
I.
00:28:48.446 --> 00:28:52.759
How unique they are and how great they are for such a wide range of kids.
00:28:52.759 --> 00:29:02.199
in terms of ages and in terms of interest in reading, because you do have the story as well as comic dialogue.
00:29:02.679 --> 00:29:08.618
So com in comics, obviously the whole story is told through dialogue and through the, the, the images.
00:29:09.009 --> 00:29:12.038
Whereas with a graphic reader, you do have a story, like a picture book.
00:29:12.038 --> 00:29:14.858
You do have some text above and below.
00:29:15.618 --> 00:29:17.118
sort of comic sections as well.
00:29:17.118 --> 00:29:23.479
So it's a, it's a really, really nice blend and I think it's so accessible for so many different types of kids.
00:29:23.479 --> 00:29:30.739
So the first thing I would say is, um, like Erica said, detective Stanley and the mystery at the museum is great for kids anywhere.
00:29:30.739 --> 00:29:33.378
Sort of, I think between sort of five to 10 because.
00:29:34.473 --> 00:29:35.703
Kids can read it.
00:29:35.756 --> 00:29:43.519
and it feels like a step up from picture books, but kids can also be read too, if they're at that age as well.
00:29:43.519 --> 00:29:47.209
So yeah, it's about a crime solving sleuth hound.
00:29:47.209 --> 00:29:48.888
So that's our Detective Stanley.
00:29:49.159 --> 00:29:55.009
He is desperately trying to retire and enjoy pancake breakfasts, but he keeps,
00:29:55.398 --> 00:29:56.538
are trying to retire, aren't they?
00:29:56.538 --> 00:29:56.808
Is it?
00:29:57.259 --> 00:30:00.019
yes, they're all trying to retire.
00:30:02.461 --> 00:30:09.217
It is a, an occupational hazard that they try to retire and somebody's always dragging them back in.
00:30:10.717 --> 00:30:19.536
so poor Stanley is trying to retire Anita's Pancake breakfast and he gets interrupted, by a mystery to solve at the local, gnarly Bone Museum.
00:30:20.096 --> 00:30:27.806
So it's, it includes a very perplexing art heist where there doesn't seem to be anything stolen, but actually there might be something stolen.
00:30:27.837 --> 00:30:32.500
some disguises, forgery, and also some wrongful imprisonment.
00:30:32.539 --> 00:30:38.029
and at the back of the book, there are some art facts to enjoy and loads of Aha.
00:30:38.029 --> 00:30:40.759
Christie Sherlock Holmes references throughout.
00:30:40.855 --> 00:30:42.925
and what we really hoped to.
00:30:43.355 --> 00:30:56.313
Give readers, sort of adult buyers and child readers, was this kind of almost vintage, like you feel as though it should have been written before because there's so many kind of tropes and cliches.
00:30:56.417 --> 00:30:56.958
Yeah,
00:30:57.542 --> 00:30:58.653
but it fits into that.
00:30:58.667 --> 00:30:58.968
of it.
00:30:59.133 --> 00:30:59.462
Yeah.
00:30:59.462 --> 00:31:06.068
It fits into that sort of literary legacy of, you know, old fashioned mystery stories.
00:31:06.094 --> 00:31:08.554
whether it's Puo or Sherlock Holmes or.
00:31:08.679 --> 00:31:21.277
Nancy Drew, or even famous five like Erica was talking about, you know, us growing up with it fits into that and kind of builds on that, heritage and the look of it is very nostalgic as well.
00:31:21.320 --> 00:31:25.280
so yeah, we, we are very conscious that we have multiple audiences.
00:31:25.280 --> 00:31:27.861
We've got the kids who read it, we've got the parents who buy it.
00:31:27.861 --> 00:31:30.441
We've got the teachers who engage with it and the librarians.
00:31:30.500 --> 00:31:32.935
And so we, we really wanted to give something to.
00:31:33.651 --> 00:31:37.286
All of those audiences that was like fun and warm and engaging.
00:31:37.595 --> 00:31:38.760
Yeah, I definitely think so.
00:31:38.760 --> 00:31:48.482
I know, so one of the, features of one of the ways in which reading for pleasure can, manifest in children or, and adults is the same in humans, of any age.
00:31:48.482 --> 00:31:55.316
is the, the pleasure of that kind of intellectual pleasure of like solving a problem And that's what people get from mysteries.
00:31:55.316 --> 00:32:03.133
And definitely I observed my children and also felt myself like when, when, because you, there's an opportunity for you to be slightly ahead of Stanley isn't there?
00:32:03.492 --> 00:32:11.682
As you're, as you're reading it, you can see things, you can see the, the clues and, and that, that kind of pleasure of, of being slightly smarter than Stanley.
00:32:12.104 --> 00:32:13.268
although he's obviously very clever.
00:32:13.748 --> 00:32:14.137
Um,
00:32:14.383 --> 00:32:14.893
Obviously,
00:32:15.667 --> 00:32:15.847
honestly.
00:32:16.647 --> 00:32:17.313
I think you're right.
00:32:17.313 --> 00:32:20.403
I think it's that pantomime thing too, where it's like he's behind you.
00:32:20.923 --> 00:32:21.282
yeah.
00:32:21.452 --> 00:32:22.472
enjoy that.
00:32:22.472 --> 00:32:25.742
You know, there's no age that doesn't enjoy that, I don't think.
00:32:25.952 --> 00:32:26.343
Yeah.
00:32:26.343 --> 00:32:33.641
And since it's been out here, because it's only just come out, in New Zealand a few weeks ago, so we've had our book launch this week for it.
00:32:33.911 --> 00:32:37.497
And so we've had lots of new readers, with parents that we might know or.
00:32:38.217 --> 00:32:39.146
Through other parents.
00:32:39.146 --> 00:32:45.717
We've had feedback and I've had some lovely videos sent of me of children's reactions to different things on the pages.
00:32:45.777 --> 00:32:54.326
Like for example, the, there's a prison scene where you kind of get a cross section of all the little animals in their cells and what they're up to.
00:32:54.717 --> 00:32:59.457
On the prior page there were, there was an escapee, a little wolf has escaped out of.
00:32:59.961 --> 00:33:11.781
A window and one of my friend's daughters was just delighted that when she turned up, she'd seen the wolf climbing outta the window and when she turned the next page, she discovered the window of which he'd broken out.
00:33:11.781 --> 00:33:20.602
So it, it's those little things that I just sort of like had just, well, that, that seemed obvious to me, but has caused like real delight in the reader.
00:33:20.872 --> 00:33:24.471
And I think what's also nice is children are going back and then rereading it again.
00:33:24.471 --> 00:33:28.372
And because you can unravel some things.
00:33:28.991 --> 00:33:31.842
Some clues earlier on if you hadn't already caught them.
00:33:32.201 --> 00:33:41.652
Now, when you read it a second time and you spot those things, the child is so delighted they feel like a detective themselves, so that you know, oh, I didn't notice that the first time.
00:33:41.652 --> 00:33:45.342
And look, we could have, we could have worked out the case sooner if we'd have seen this.
00:33:45.701 --> 00:33:48.672
So yeah, it's really nice.
00:33:48.761 --> 00:33:49.271
That's brilliant.
00:33:50.186 --> 00:33:55.136
And how did it work between, so you, after you did this, um, mad three week hustle to get,
00:33:55.751 --> 00:33:55.932
Yeah.
00:33:56.186 --> 00:34:14.746
to get the first deadline, then when you, presumably you had a little bit more time, and as you were already working on this really collaboratively and it's, was it less, you know, typically with people I've spoken to, it's kind of like the, the book's written and then it goes, and then, and then the illustrations are done where you a lot more in communication
00:34:14.972 --> 00:34:15.902
definitely.
00:34:15.931 --> 00:34:16.922
Yeah, definitely.
00:34:17.003 --> 00:34:17.858
How did it kind of work?
00:34:18.503 --> 00:34:23.123
well with the, it, it's evolved because with the first one, Hannah just wrote the.
00:34:24.548 --> 00:34:25.898
It was amazing.
00:34:26.018 --> 00:34:27.849
Like I was just blown away.
00:34:27.909 --> 00:34:31.778
'cause I could feel, I could see in my head how it was gonna work already.
00:34:31.809 --> 00:34:33.338
So I got very excited about it.
00:34:33.338 --> 00:34:35.829
I could start to imagine how it might work.
00:34:35.829 --> 00:34:42.878
And, and for me, this is the first sort of comic book type book I've ever created.
00:34:42.878 --> 00:34:49.327
So I, I wasn't quite sure in my head how we were gonna tackle those bits where we needed text and then.
00:34:49.355 --> 00:34:51.318
Like intro texts and then speech bubbles.
00:34:51.527 --> 00:35:03.018
Hannah had mapped it out how she thought it could work, but it was like a case of sort of getting inside Hannah's head to get inside my own head to figure out how that would work on a page.
00:35:03.085 --> 00:35:14.875
so it was a case of, I, I think I just then dealt with it like I would any book that I'm given from an, an editor and told to lay out like my job as book designer just kicked in and, um.
00:35:15.219 --> 00:35:15.340
Hmm.
00:35:15.628 --> 00:35:23.307
Figured out how Hannah's work words would work across 64 pages, because I don't think you'd broken it down on that first one, had you?
00:35:23.307 --> 00:35:26.427
I don't think at that point you were like thinking this page could have this on.
00:35:26.878 --> 00:35:28.588
I think you'd written it as a story.
00:35:28.588 --> 00:35:28.617
I.
00:35:28.753 --> 00:35:29.023
put.
00:35:29.728 --> 00:35:34.347
I wrote, I wrote, I remember writing it as a story, but then I remember breaking it down into kind of what it could look like.
00:35:34.588 --> 00:35:42.358
And then I gave Erica this really horrible document where I had actually drawn, like, here's a panel and da, da da, and this is a mouse.
00:35:42.358 --> 00:35:44.007
And like, it was just hideous, you know?
00:35:44.487 --> 00:35:48.117
Um, but it was like on the page at least kind of.
00:35:48.418 --> 00:35:54.027
And, and, and like Erica said, that has evolved the second one that we have written.
00:35:54.125 --> 00:35:55.728
it's almost kind of in the bag.
00:35:55.795 --> 00:36:00.175
I created a, a table where I had, this is the speech that goes on the page.
00:36:00.175 --> 00:36:02.485
This is the speech that goes in the dialogue bubbles.
00:36:02.485 --> 00:36:12.572
This is what I'm thinking of for the page, you know, whether it's three panels or it's, and then as you said, Lucy, it's so collaborative and it, we just bounce backwards and forwards with each other.
00:36:12.577 --> 00:36:19.896
Erica's uh, husband's got a background in advertising, so he's also can be really useful in terms of imagining things as storyboards.
00:36:19.929 --> 00:36:22.728
And having that sort of visual overview.
00:36:22.768 --> 00:36:30.740
and yeah, we just kind of keep, keep going until it working, you know, or we'll try things and then go, that's not working.
00:36:30.813 --> 00:36:31.014
Yeah.
00:36:31.333 --> 00:36:37.889
So it was really important for us that, we, yeah, we did, we, we worked on everything together and we go backwards and forwards.
00:36:37.889 --> 00:36:41.760
We do absolutely have our own skillset, which is great.
00:36:41.760 --> 00:36:44.721
And I just so admire Erica's work.
00:36:44.721 --> 00:36:50.480
so there's this real like, mutual respect and somehow we have this.
00:36:51.454 --> 00:36:56.014
shared vision is just aligned.
00:36:56.164 --> 00:36:57.335
It's crazy actually.
00:36:57.335 --> 00:37:11.014
Sometimes it's like, oh yeah, you know, like we, the other day we were talking about the kind of animal that one of the villains should be, I was saying to a friend of mine, I was like, God, we had the funniest conversation about do you think they should be mice?
00:37:11.014 --> 00:37:12.875
I don't know what do, what about weasels?
00:37:12.875 --> 00:37:13.025
You know?
00:37:13.025 --> 00:37:16.445
And we were just, and I was like, this is the best work conversation ever.
00:37:18.320 --> 00:37:21.170
I was just having the absolute time of my life.
00:37:21.530 --> 00:37:22.130
Um,
00:37:22.739 --> 00:37:25.715
And we're also good at taking criticism from each other.
00:37:25.715 --> 00:37:32.585
Not that of, we often have to do it because I think we just both respect that each person has what their.
00:37:33.019 --> 00:37:36.110
Skillset is, and so you trust them with it and you run with it.
00:37:36.110 --> 00:37:41.869
But equally like I'll send stuff over to Hannah and go, do you think this is working?
00:37:41.869 --> 00:37:46.099
Like does be honest, is there anything you would change?
00:37:46.159 --> 00:37:49.820
And I want her to, and she does tell me when things.
00:37:50.945 --> 00:37:54.784
And then I take that criticism and we'll make it into something better.
00:37:55.085 --> 00:38:00.635
And I think it's really important to be able to do that because that's what makes the work good.
00:38:00.762 --> 00:38:07.802
so yeah, it's not being you, you can't be shy about saying something doesn't work.
00:38:07.896 --> 00:38:09.005
Yeah, I totally agree.
00:38:09.005 --> 00:38:09.396
I think what.
00:38:10.126 --> 00:38:19.215
Makes it work so well, is that I know for sure, and I think Erica knows for sure too, that our intention is to make it as good as it can be.
00:38:19.635 --> 00:38:24.465
So it's not, it's not cri, it's criticism only for the sake of betterment.
00:38:24.706 --> 00:38:33.826
Like, and we are both, we love kids' books so much, and we love graphic readers and graphic novels so much that we want it to be like the best it can be.
00:38:33.826 --> 00:38:35.326
And we're so driven by that.
00:38:36.766 --> 00:38:39.556
so yeah, it's, it's always delivered.
00:38:40.351 --> 00:38:42.661
Received knowing that intention.
00:38:42.724 --> 00:38:42.994
Yeah.
00:38:43.025 --> 00:38:44.315
There's also a lot of trust there.
00:38:44.483 --> 00:38:46.132
It doesn't have to happen very often though.
00:38:46.132 --> 00:38:48.353
I honestly, but Hannah's writing just comes in and I go, yep.
00:38:48.382 --> 00:38:48.922
Nailed it.
00:38:49.492 --> 00:38:51.773
And then I think most of the time I get it right back.
00:38:51.773 --> 00:38:53.422
So it's um, yeah.
00:38:53.768 --> 00:38:54.217
You do.
00:38:55.148 --> 00:38:57.487
And it is like we're saying this kind of shared vision of it.
00:38:57.492 --> 00:39:00.157
It's like, yeah, that, that's what I was seeing in my mind.
00:39:00.157 --> 00:39:00.938
It's great.
00:39:01.152 --> 00:39:01.782
That's brilliant.
00:39:01.842 --> 00:39:06.032
And in terms of the visual style, is that very similar to that original
00:39:06.228 --> 00:39:08.867
it is really, it's really,
00:39:08.943 --> 00:39:10.052
How did you settle on that?
00:39:10.052 --> 00:39:11.492
It seems it's really distinctive.
00:39:11.492 --> 00:39:11.853
I think
00:39:12.047 --> 00:39:17.208
yeah, I was gonna try and get it, not that it would work very well for a podcast for me to show you a cover, but, um.
00:39:18.693 --> 00:39:21.092
Yeah, it hasn't strayed too far away from that.
00:39:21.092 --> 00:39:22.682
Apart from it obviously went more colorful.
00:39:22.713 --> 00:39:24.632
'cause I was working in a very limited color palette.
00:39:24.682 --> 00:39:29.739
what has changed is that he was, I mean he's very 2D anyway.
00:39:29.739 --> 00:39:31.000
It's a very flat world.
00:39:31.510 --> 00:39:39.489
Um, but he was even flatter before because I'd never ever seen him from not this angle, like it was just an eye.
00:39:39.789 --> 00:39:41.889
But I'm doing side profile.
00:39:42.070 --> 00:39:42.250
It.
00:39:42.719 --> 00:39:43.010
Yeah.
00:39:43.599 --> 00:39:49.733
So just an eye on his little snout and, he can't always be sideways, can he?
00:39:51.759 --> 00:40:04.418
So then I had to figure out how to draw him from the front when he looked very strange to start with because taking that 2D flatness and then figuring out, well, what's he gonna look like when you can see bow eyes and his nose straight on, and what's his hat gonna look like?
00:40:04.418 --> 00:40:09.601
So it took, a few attempts to kind of like figure out his.
00:40:10.096 --> 00:40:13.275
How he works in a more 3D world, even though he is still very flat.
00:40:13.635 --> 00:40:16.396
So he, he hasn't, he hasn't changed much.
00:40:16.456 --> 00:40:18.735
His, his outfit is exactly the same.
00:40:18.735 --> 00:40:26.581
He still wears his little yellow stripe trousers and his dear stalker hat and his little cape and his little dress shoes, always looks impeccable.
00:40:26.630 --> 00:40:28.971
and then as for the rest of the world, it.
00:40:29.960 --> 00:40:40.327
It was a bit of back and forth with flying Eye at the beginning to just get that right because I'd use it kind of like more, of a retro kind of dotty texture on him for the history mystery.
00:40:40.568 --> 00:40:46.038
Um, and that's all gone in book and it just relies on the kind of, its pure color and the beautiful texture of the paper.
00:40:46.070 --> 00:40:52.858
so it was kind of advice to sort of like steer to away a little bit from using textures'cause it's really not required.
00:40:53.713 --> 00:40:56.083
It's gonna look amazing once it's on paper.
00:40:56.443 --> 00:41:05.402
So it was kind of working with them to make sure I got the color palette right and my color palette right from the beginning was always, it was thinking of things like, Wes Anderson, color palettes were just, it just.
00:41:05.882 --> 00:41:06.693
Felt right.
00:41:06.693 --> 00:41:12.393
And those kind of cross section sort of views of things that we get are very much inspired by his films.
00:41:12.452 --> 00:41:16.882
And then, Paddington too, all of the prisons, my favorite movie.
00:41:17.152 --> 00:41:23.483
Um, all of the prison scenes in that are like with rarely good inspiration for like how the,
00:41:23.902 --> 00:41:30.652
live, so I live in the town where padding the creator of Patton was born and we just had our statues stolen.
00:41:30.652 --> 00:41:31.012
It's been
00:41:31.012 --> 00:41:32.003
I saw that.
00:41:32.092 --> 00:41:34.068
not sure if it's reached your shortes.
00:41:34.117 --> 00:41:34.717
saw that.
00:41:34.717 --> 00:41:35.228
I was shocked.
00:41:35.228 --> 00:41:37.628
They ripped the front of Paddington bear off.
00:41:38.047 --> 00:41:40.208
They ripped people were leaving.
00:41:40.987 --> 00:41:44.498
they had like a little CSI tent over the bench when his statue was stolen.
00:41:44.527 --> 00:41:49.860
And, people left marmalade and marmalades sandwiches on the bench for weeks until he came back.
00:41:50.514 --> 00:41:51.670
Oh no.
00:41:52.570 --> 00:41:53.844
But is he back now?
00:41:54.235 --> 00:41:55.614
Is he back in place?
00:41:55.824 --> 00:41:56.605
They fixed him.
00:41:56.829 --> 00:42:00.250
he's just last week to tell you
00:42:00.324 --> 00:42:01.135
Paddington is back.
00:42:01.599 --> 00:42:14.869
was returned it was, and because the judge, and when the people were sentenced to it, these drunk two drunken people from the RF, they, the judge said that their behavior was the antithesis of everything Paddington stood
00:42:14.974 --> 00:42:15.934
Not completely.
00:42:16.864 --> 00:42:17.679
I mean, it was shocking.
00:42:18.364 --> 00:42:18.994
right now.
00:42:19.204 --> 00:42:19.443
This.
00:42:22.179 --> 00:42:25.233
Yeah, well the people of Newbury have been shook to their
00:42:25.498 --> 00:42:25.619
I.
00:42:25.653 --> 00:42:25.833
by
00:42:26.014 --> 00:42:27.123
fair enough too.
00:42:28.324 --> 00:42:28.893
his back
00:42:28.954 --> 00:42:29.193
I
00:42:29.373 --> 00:42:30.304
Oh, I'm glad he is back.
00:42:30.304 --> 00:42:30.364
to
00:42:30.543 --> 00:42:32.793
that's like your mom saying, I'm very disappointed in you.
00:42:32.793 --> 00:42:34.773
It's like this is the antithesis of everything.
00:42:34.773 --> 00:42:35.733
Paddington stands for,
00:42:36.153 --> 00:42:38.793
Yeah, exactly.
00:42:41.304 --> 00:42:44.074
so I've just got a few more questions before we wrap up.
00:42:44.150 --> 00:42:51.440
but Erica, I wanted to talk to you because we're talking about the kind of journey of a book and there are roles which I don't really understand in publishing.
00:42:51.740 --> 00:42:52.221
I still don't.
00:42:52.221 --> 00:42:53.451
designer is one of them.
00:42:54.981 --> 00:43:00.471
So, and I know when I was speaking to the team at Flying Eye, they were saying that it was quite unusual for an illustrator to also be.
00:43:00.701 --> 00:43:02.860
The book designer on a project, so I just,
00:43:03.411 --> 00:43:04.041
Yeah, I,
00:43:04.121 --> 00:43:05.286
explain that, what that means?
00:43:05.331 --> 00:43:11.990
I didn't really know that, but that's because that's always been, I was a designer first before I was an illustrator.
00:43:11.992 --> 00:43:14.755
So the two kind of just go hand in hand for me.
00:43:14.755 --> 00:43:23.949
And when I was working at Osborne, I was often working on titles, the activity book type titles, where I would design and put them together and work collaboratively with other illustrators as well.
00:43:23.949 --> 00:43:27.730
So it'd be designing for them, but then there would be spreads that I would just illustrate myself.
00:43:27.730 --> 00:43:31.659
So in my head, a kind of like how things end up on the page.
00:43:31.690 --> 00:43:38.019
Always start with where the words will go or, or how they will be laid out and making sure.
00:43:38.425 --> 00:43:40.945
That it is really super readable.
00:43:40.974 --> 00:43:48.744
Like you, the text needs to be in the right place, otherwise the reader won't understand what they're doing or where they should be going.
00:43:48.894 --> 00:43:52.164
with younger readers, where they're just really learning how to navigate that
00:43:52.344 --> 00:43:59.425
Yeah, so it's really important that words start up in the top left corner and they really gradually work down the page.
00:43:59.425 --> 00:44:06.385
And if they're gonna end up in the bottom right, it's got to be sequentially sunk that constantly hop backwards because otherwise you won't know where to go.
00:44:06.610 --> 00:44:22.780
So for me, that was all part of like, how I was gonna figure out the illustrations was, uh, the words were put on the page first, so, so that we could make sure between me and Hannah, like even before there were pictures on the page, the words and the speech bubbles went on the page.
00:44:22.780 --> 00:44:29.650
So we could see that the leading text into those speech bubbles would work, that the characters having those conversations would work.
00:44:29.826 --> 00:44:39.905
and that the story would, would make sense so that all came before the characters even ended up on the page, and that then made it easier for me to figure out how many frames I might use.
00:44:39.905 --> 00:44:42.215
Per like trying to tell the story.
00:44:42.396 --> 00:44:55.835
There aren't too many in like, whereas in maybe a normal comic book, you might suddenly get these, um, frame after frame of no, um, text and you're just sort of led to kind of like what's happening in the story through the image.
00:44:55.835 --> 00:44:56.916
But I think because these are.
00:44:57.715 --> 00:45:12.655
For younger readers and because we are gonna assume that they may be being read to first with them, I know reading those comic books with my daughter, that actually it's very hard to read something that's maybe only got sound effects or nothing going on.
00:45:12.655 --> 00:45:18.956
You have to then describe the picture to then sort of describe for it to make sense with the words that follow.
00:45:19.315 --> 00:45:23.965
So, um, we had to kind of make sure that we didn't have too many frames on each page.
00:45:25.085 --> 00:45:36.545
To make sure young readers would understand it and that we were always maybe partly explaining what was in that image, even if sometimes it's probably quite obvious, but just so that it, it told the story in a nice, fluid way.
00:45:36.931 --> 00:45:48.150
I can't really imagine the other way round where it's sort of like designed for somebody and then just given to you as the illustrator, especially if the illustrator sort of had the concept for the whole book.
00:45:48.150 --> 00:45:50.550
I'm interested to know how it works in their head.
00:45:50.550 --> 00:45:56.041
I only know my way, which is I guess the designer in me do everything.
00:45:56.610 --> 00:45:57.001
Yeah,
00:45:57.030 --> 00:45:57.601
everything.
00:45:57.601 --> 00:45:58.501
Is Erica's way.
00:45:59.371 --> 00:46:01.891
micromanage every single element.
00:46:03.271 --> 00:46:04.260
Complete control.
00:46:04.396 --> 00:46:07.606
It's really interesting for me to find out all of this.
00:46:07.626 --> 00:46:08.391
and then kind of.
00:46:08.536 --> 00:46:12.856
Go back and think about how, so to find out about the way that it worked and how collaborative it was.
00:46:12.856 --> 00:46:21.945
And now I, I wanna go back and read it again now and see if like, you know, with that knowledge and see, you know, kind of almost imagine the decisions that you've made along the way.
00:46:21.996 --> 00:46:30.175
So I'll definitely be doing that after we've finished recording, go back and look at it again with fresh eyes, thinking of you two, um, working an eye on it.
00:46:30.456 --> 00:46:35.306
So I think you've kind of hinted, but are we gonna see more Detective Stanley books in the future?
00:46:36.025 --> 00:46:38.021
I think you said you've already got one done
00:46:38.161 --> 00:46:38.971
Yeah, absolutely.
00:46:38.971 --> 00:46:42.990
There are, we have a three book deal with Flying Eye.
00:46:43.331 --> 00:46:44.831
The second book is done.
00:46:44.891 --> 00:46:46.721
The third book is
00:46:47.641 --> 00:46:48.141
Not done,
00:46:48.251 --> 00:46:48.550
mapped.
00:46:49.331 --> 00:46:49.900
yeah, not done.
00:46:49.990 --> 00:46:50.710
It's not done.
00:46:51.101 --> 00:46:53.440
Um, we, um,
00:46:53.666 --> 00:46:54.505
but we know what it is.
00:46:54.820 --> 00:47:00.050
cover for it, and we do know the sort of trajectory of the story,
00:47:01.521 --> 00:47:02.990
I'm excited about it.
00:47:03.380 --> 00:47:04.286
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:47:04.505 --> 00:47:05.226
Amazing.
00:47:05.391 --> 00:47:05.601
it too.
00:47:06.260 --> 00:47:07.760
Yeah, yeah.
00:47:08.181 --> 00:47:13.731
so yeah, it's great because I just, yeah, he's just, he's just not made for just one book.
00:47:13.731 --> 00:47:14.150
He's.
00:47:14.505 --> 00:47:15.485
he could just keep going.
00:47:15.626 --> 00:47:16.766
He just can't retire.
00:47:17.195 --> 00:47:18.635
he can't retire.
00:47:18.699 --> 00:47:25.239
the next one is called Detective Stanley and the Green Thumb Thief, and it's set at the nar, bone Botanical Gardens.
00:47:26.079 --> 00:47:31.599
And a very special precious plant may or may not have gone missing.
00:47:32.079 --> 00:47:36.548
So it's all based, so Stanley's called in again to go and sort it out.
00:47:36.813 --> 00:47:42.864
so that one's was, I would say really fun to illustrate, but I dunno if it was, I had to draw so many plants.
00:47:43.465 --> 00:47:45.804
So, so many plants.
00:47:46.675 --> 00:47:47.809
You need to agree these things.
00:47:47.829 --> 00:47:49.730
At the right, you've got no excuse.
00:47:50.041 --> 00:47:50.744
a greenhouse.
00:47:50.795 --> 00:47:52.014
you've made your own problems.
00:47:53.170 --> 00:47:56.351
It's, this is the other great thing about having this collaboration.
00:47:56.351 --> 00:48:02.710
There was, I think there was something, some character, anyway, I think it was like, I think this character should be an ex animal.
00:48:02.710 --> 00:48:06.101
And Erica was like, I'm not gonna keep drawing that animal.
00:48:06.101 --> 00:48:08.201
No, I'm, I said, okay, well, we'll just change it.
00:48:08.201 --> 00:48:08.710
We'll make it a
00:48:09.016 --> 00:48:09.306
Yeah.
00:48:09.371 --> 00:48:10.090
whatever it was.
00:48:10.090 --> 00:48:10.181
And
00:48:11.146 --> 00:48:13.811
I dunno why I have particular, yeah.
00:48:14.170 --> 00:48:17.291
Aversions to some animals and not others.
00:48:17.590 --> 00:48:19.990
But it might be just be because I'm like, I don't think I can draw them.
00:48:20.561 --> 00:48:21.460
Yeah, exactly.
00:48:21.610 --> 00:48:27.070
But then I've had to draw some very odd animals for the, for these books that I've probably never drawn before.
00:48:27.070 --> 00:48:29.530
So, and yeah, you learn to draw them.
00:48:29.750 --> 00:48:33.735
We can sort of help make life a little bit easier for each other, I think, which is nice.
00:48:33.759 --> 00:48:35.438
But yes, more Detective Stanley to come.
00:48:35.438 --> 00:48:36.818
A hundred percent.
00:48:37.498 --> 00:48:38.248
exciting.
00:48:38.278 --> 00:48:40.708
I think he, he's also lends himself to merch.
00:48:40.739 --> 00:48:41.009
I wanna
00:48:41.429 --> 00:48:42.159
Yeah, me too.
00:48:42.958 --> 00:48:43.679
range of merch.
00:48:44.088 --> 00:48:44.548
Me too.
00:48:44.864 --> 00:48:45.224
Yeah.
00:48:46.168 --> 00:48:47.338
let's get that sorted please.
00:48:47.608 --> 00:48:47.768
Excellent.
00:48:47.983 --> 00:49:01.628
okay, so the final question on the podcast is always if, listeners were to add one comic or book book about comics, if you like, um, to our two B red piles tomorrow, what would you recommend we read?
00:49:02.634 --> 00:49:04.884
Something that you've read recently that you've enjoyed, that you'd
00:49:04.974 --> 00:49:11.416
I have got, it's not a, graphic novel as such, but it's in that, I'm gonna hold it up'cause I've got it right here.
00:49:12.106 --> 00:49:14.715
It's called Myths and Monsters and Mayhem.
00:49:15.766 --> 00:49:16.606
Ancient Greece.
00:49:16.606 --> 00:49:21.315
So it's a nonfiction book by James Davies by Big Picture Press.
00:49:21.646 --> 00:49:23.596
And I love it.
00:49:23.780 --> 00:49:40.806
having just watched, chaos on Netflix with all the Greek, this was actually, I went back to this after that because it explained it all because it's all of the, Greek stories in comic book format and there are only a couple of pages, each one, but it's so well done and the illustrations are just.
00:49:41.527 --> 00:49:42.277
Incredible.
00:49:42.336 --> 00:49:46.117
So I think it fits in that comic world, even though it's a nonfiction book.
00:49:46.657 --> 00:49:48.652
So, yeah, that's my recommendation.
00:49:48.958 --> 00:49:49.679
Excellent.
00:49:49.798 --> 00:49:51.264
Hannah, have you got one for us?
00:49:51.329 --> 00:49:57.378
Oh, I just, I think that listeners should absolutely rush out and buy Detective Stanley, the mystery of the museum.
00:49:59.733 --> 00:50:00.155
Of course, of
00:50:00.313 --> 00:50:00.554
Excellent.
00:50:00.664 --> 00:50:01.313
Plug, Hannah.
00:50:01.603 --> 00:50:04.068
yeah, what can I say?
00:50:04.128 --> 00:50:05.753
Just, you know, the best of the best.
00:50:06.114 --> 00:50:06.320
Yeah.
00:50:06.320 --> 00:50:07.130
I would second that.
00:50:07.130 --> 00:50:09.159
I think it's really, beautifully produced.
00:50:09.213 --> 00:50:14.913
a really distinctive look and to when you read it as well, like that story.
00:50:14.972 --> 00:50:22.356
Um, so yeah, I would definitely, and I think it does, like, that feels like really important gap in this transition, time of reading as well.
00:50:22.385 --> 00:50:24.400
I think it's um, quite exciting, isn't it?
00:50:24.400 --> 00:50:36.168
'cause it fits what Everybody's telling us that children's reading is, is not where it should be, and that, in order to get more children, reading books need to be shorter and more engaging.
00:50:36.798 --> 00:50:41.088
And I just think this series of books is like so spot on.
00:50:41.088 --> 00:50:50.958
It's, it's got a bit of everything and it's gonna, you know, be perfect for those children that are maybe struggling a bit with their reading or, or they're not.
00:50:50.958 --> 00:50:52.938
And they just wanna look at something that looks really cool.
00:50:53.599 --> 00:50:56.333
Um, but I think it's that shorter format.
00:50:56.384 --> 00:50:58.253
Comic is really accessible.
00:50:58.367 --> 00:50:58.786
Yeah,
00:50:58.786 --> 00:50:59.177
agree.
00:50:59.297 --> 00:51:06.887
I just think, and it's just such an exciting time and what a great to be able to access in these times of.
00:51:07.876 --> 00:51:10.907
Confusion and strife and the world gone slightly bad
00:51:11.686 --> 00:51:12.166
Mm.
00:51:12.197 --> 00:51:15.257
able to dive into these worlds.
00:51:15.856 --> 00:51:16.981
Lose yourself in a story.
00:51:17.132 --> 00:51:17.422
Yeah.
00:51:17.686 --> 00:51:19.018
What a brilliant note to end on.
00:51:19.018 --> 00:51:19.768
Thank you so much.
00:51:19.768 --> 00:51:21.717
Thanks for giving up your time, talking to me.
00:51:21.717 --> 00:51:23.487
And thanks for making this brilliant book.
00:51:23.632 --> 00:51:24.387
Thank you.
00:51:24.402 --> 00:51:24.612
you.