Apart from Art Spiegelman and Kaz, the artists here are all different
ones from those featured in last year’s Little Lit.
As in the last book, there are 64 pages, but a couple of the stories
are longer in this one. Jacques de Loustal and
Paul Auster tell the tale "The Day I Disappeared" about
a man whose ghost follows him around one day and then stops himself
from drowning. "Barnaby" by Crockett Johnson tells the
story of a boy whose fairy godmother turns out to be a little
Irish man in a green coat with pink wings, Mr. O’Malley. "Mr.
Frost," by Posy Simmonds, is a moralistic story about two
children who invite Mr. Frost to stay with them so that they do
not have to go to school, but they soon regret their choice. Jules Feiffer’s comic
strip is about a boy who becomes trapped in a comic book. Ian
Falconer and David Sedaris give us a gem about a girl from a proudly
ugly family who keeps on making faces, until one day her face
sticks in the pose of a pretty girl, which horrifies her.

My favorite contribution is "These Cats Today" by Kim Deitch,
for its great artwork. It’s a work of detailed psychedelic bizarreness
about the land of Katropolis. Deitch’s drawing is wonderfully
creative and both children and adults should enjoy it. On the
whole, I enjoyed the earlier collection of Folklore and Fairy
Tale Funnies, which has fun with traditional children’s
stories, slightly more than this book, but this is still a terrific
book. The stories here nearly all have a cleverness both in their
stories and their artwork that most children who already like
comics will find thrilling; children who have never paid much
attention to comics before should find this a great introduction
to the form. Highly recommended.

Link:

Little Lit Web Site

© 2001 Christian Perring. First Serial Rights.

Christian Perring,
Ph.D., is Chair of the Philosophy Department at Dowling College,
Long Island. He is editor of Metapsychology Online Review.
His main research is on philosophical issues in psychiatry.
He is especially interested in exploring how philosophers can
play a greater role in public life. He is available to give talks
on many philosophical or controversial issues in mental health.

Categories: ArtAndPhotography, Fiction