Use the Force: Star Wars Through Comics

Jedi Academy by Jeffrey Brown

Jeffrey Brown caught the world’s attention with his first Star Wars themed book, Darth Vader and Son.  Now he introduces us to Roan, a young comic artist living on Tatooine in the first book of his new series, Jedi Academy. He lives in a galaxy far, far away, but similar to kids here on Earth, he aspires to be like his big brother, who is at Pilot Academy School for what feels like eons.

When Roan isn’t accepted it seems like the world is going to end. An acceptance letter from the Jedi Academy comes, and that’s at least better than the Tatooine Agricultural Academy where you have to shovel Bantha fertilizer, so he packs his bags. But Roan isn’t quite sure what a Jedi is, let alone that he wants to be one. We get a peek into Roans life at Jedi school through journal entries and comics, and find that the start of school is pretty rough. From deciphering Yoda’s lessons to the struggles of making friends, Roan spills it all in an endearing and relatable way.

An Evening with Bookbuilders of Boston: "Judge a Book by its Cover"

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The Bookbuilders event on February 29, “Judge A Book by Its Cover,” was highly informative and entertaining! Three very creative speakers illustrated the process of designing book covers. Alex Camlin, the Creative Director at Da Capo Press, Carol Chu, Associate Art Director at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Children’s Books, and George Restrepo, a locally based graphic designer, all brought students in Pub Club and others into their creative process.

The event started off with Alex Camlin, who has worked at Da Capo for eleven years. He began by emphasizing his personal style, which leaned more toward graphic art and away from photography. In going through the different phases of cover design for Jack Kerouac’s The Sea is My Brother, Camlin stressed looking at the styles of several of Kerouac’s other titles, such as On The Road.

Wanted: Nonhuman Critters for Human Children

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Lately I’ve been getting a bunch of queries featuring main characters that are beings previously unheard of. While I’m a big fan of aliens and/or other nonhuman critters playing a part in a story, sometimes when an author embarks on a tale including only a checkerboard, slimy, spherical, who-knows-what, the plotline gets really difficult to understand. Stories featuring animals (families of bunnies, dogs, cats, etc.) all work because those animals are something a child is familiar with already. However, a host of some things previously unknown, like tiny, fluffy cubes, are going to have a hard time keeping kids interested enough to turn the page, unless the next page consists of the cubes interacting with a relatable human character. Fluffballs can work, but they can’t stand on their own; there must be some relatable animals or humans in there too.

The Lorax: Book & Movie

I think The Lorax is a cool book.

The movie might be worth a look.

The Lorax is also its name;

It’s different but still the same.

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The Lorax, which opened in theaters March 2^nd, is the tale of a world destroyed by consumerist greed. Based on Dr. Seuss’ book of the same name, the movie goes into more detail than the short book ever could. Seuss’ world is expanded onscreen as the movie builds off the colorful illustrations in his book for its aesthetics. For example, the unnamed city of the book is given life and dubbed Thneedville. It is portrayed as a colorful plastic place where the “trees” are inflatable, light up, and work as disco balls too. The imagined city, based off the buildings on the first page of the book, fits with Seuss’ whimsical illustrations even though it was never explicitly described. However, the Lorax, Humming-Fish, and bearlike Bar-ba-loots all look like they jumped right off the page. The beautiful Truffula Valley appears almost exactly how Seuss portrays it in his book. While the movie’s animation imitates the book’s pictures fairly well, the plot is expanded and altered in order to extend the story into a feature film.

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One of the main ways the book was adapted was to add in subplots and develop the characters. For example, Dr. Seuss addresses the reader in his book, but the movie has an actual character. The boy in the red-striped ensemble from Seuss’ illustrations becomes young protagonist Ted. Other additions to the story include love-interest Audrey, bad guy O’Hare, and Ted’s crazy mom and grandmother. The Once-ler’s family, while only making a brief appearance in the book, becomes individualized and developed – we’re treated to a greedy aunt, uncle, and cousins along with a doubting mother. The Once-ler gets a detailed backstory, which explains his motivations for making Thneeds. The tale of how he destroyed all the trees is embellished and features the Lorax’s attempts to get rid of him, along with their burgeoning friendship. This relationship is not explored in the book at all. In another deviation, the Once-ler gives the Lorax his word that he will not to chop down any more trees. But of course he breaks his promise.

According to the production notes from the official movie website, the movie team tried “to flesh out the book’s characters and create a complementary world” in order to “craft a feature production that would draw audiences further into its story” by filling in “what happened before the book began and after it ended.” This technique of fleshing out characters and building off of the given plot is generally used to make short books into longer movies. The Lorax, following the great tradition of books into movies, maintains Dr. Seuss’ whimsical vibe while expanding upon his classic story.

Written by Alex Kowel