Toon Books is a collection of hardcover graphic early readers launched in 2008 by New Yorker art editor Françoise Mouly. With titles by Mouly's advisor/husband Art Spiegelman (the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Maus), Geoffrey Hayes, Jay Lynch, Dean Haspiel and Eleanor Davis. Toon Books promotes itself as "the first high-quality comics designed for children ages four and up."[1]
Calvin Reid announced the collection in Publishers Weekly in 2007 as having the potential to revitalize the field of comics for kids: "Françoise Mouly is at it again. After transforming American comics with the seminal 1980s comics anthology RAW, Mouly is now out to teach kids to read by using comics."[2] 2008 saw the launch of eight titles, each of which received glowing reviews and multiple awards, prizes, and distinctions.[3]
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The concept for the TOON Books came to Françoise Mouly when her son Dash was learning to read and his first grade teacher assigned him "easy readers". Appalled by the lack of appeal of the educational material, Mouly instead spent time with her child and armloads of French comic books. In fact, one of the first releases in the TOON Books collection is Silly Lilly, aka Mimi Cracra, a comic-book character familiar to millions of French toddlers.
After proposing the TOON Books to major children books publishers (from 2004 to 2007) and being rejected because the proposed books didn't fit existing categories, Mouly returned to her roots as a self-publisher (She had founded her small press, RAW Books & Graphics, in 1977, and RAW Junior in 1999.) As she had done for the avant-garde comics and graphics magazine, RAW, or the kids comics anthology, Little Lit, both of which she co-edited, or for the covers of The New Yorker, Mouly gathered an array of talent for the TOON Books. She published star authors (such as Harry Bliss, Art Spiegelman or Jeff Smith), veteran children book authors (Geoffrey Hayes) as well as novice cartoonists (Eleanor Davis, the author of Stinky, was still in school when Mouly contacted her for a TOON Book.)
Attitudes towards comics have radically changed since the 1954 Congressional hearings where they were denounced as the cause of juvenile delinquency. They are now touted by progressive librarians and educators as an extremely effective tool for children to discover the pleasures of reading.[5][6] As Art Spiegelman said, "Comics can be a gateway drug to literacy."
In the absence of any model or precedent, Mouly developed her own methodology to make sure the TOON Books would be well adapted to beginning readers' needs. She consulted with educators as she developed each individual book but also took rough drafts of the stories to schools, taking notes while watching children read.[7] Responding to educators and librarians suggestions, she's now expanding the TOON Books line with bilingual versions (French publisher Casterman just released French-English TOON Books,) audio versions (which will be developed into a novel multilingual tool for ESL and/or support for reluctant readers,) as well as the first non-fiction TOON Book.
The TOON Books have been greeted enthusiastically by librarians, teachers, and parents looking for material for early readers. Early on, the Maryland State Superintendent of Schools, Dr. Nancy Grasmick, embraced the TOON Books as part of the Maryland Comic Book Initiative. Other states school systems are now considering the TOON Books for their own Comics in the Classroom initiatives. The books are part of Renaissance Learning' Accelerated Reader Program and have been assigned Reading Recovery and lexile levels, all of which are first for comics for young children.[8]
The TOON Books website offers free online learning tools for both students and educators. The downloadable lesson plans and activity sheets provide teachers with leveled lesson plans for K-3. [9] Besides the downloadable lesson plans and activity sheets, these tools also include free online readers, videos, and games.
The free "CarTOON Maker"[10] invites readers to make their own cartoons as a reader’s response. The online Readers Theater teaches educators how to get students to perform TOON Books. On the TOON site for kids, early readers can make paper puppets, watch videos, learn carTOON lessons from master cartoonists, and make their own cartoons.
Geoffrey Hayes’ Benny and Penny: The Big No-No! won the 2010 Theodor Seuss Geisel Award. The Theodor Seuss Geisel Award is awarded to the author(s) and illustrator(s) of the most renowned book for early readers published in English in the U.S.A.[11]
Jeff Smith’s Little Mouse Gets Ready was named a 2010 Theodor Seuss Geisel Honor Book.
In 2009, Stinky, written and illustrated by Eleanor Davis, was named a Theodor Seuss Geisel Honor Book.