Big Fat Little Lit

What a great comic book for kids and grownups alike. I recommend the whole series. Please don't just buy for your kids and let them read them without, perhaps, a bit of "let's read this together" oversight. There are some mature (not inappropriate, but good lessons to be learned...) themes.

"Big Fat Little Lit" is a greatest hits collection. It's advertised as appropriate for ages nine to twelve, but you have to wonder about that. ("Our audience is all ages --- even though children's book publishing doesn't like that," says Mouly.) Some of it is just dandy for our six-year-old. Most of it will delight any media-savvy `tween. But its greatest appeal is surely to adults, who may buy it as an ultra-hip coffee table book, only to discover it is the Fountain of Youth. In this world, attitude counts. Which isn't to say the morals of these little tales are negative in any way. They're just... twisted. Not surprising when the contributors include David Sedaris, Gahan Wilson, Maurice Sendak, Jules Feiffer and the cream of the alt-comix set. For example: "The Hungry Horse" is the sad tale of a critter that will work so long as it isn't fed --- of course, after a decade, a farmer tosses the nag a crust of bread. There is a "Hasidic parable" and a story of a "fairy godfather". In a retelling of "The Princess and the Pea", after the prince rejects 1,628 princesses, someone comments, "Perhaps he can't make a commitment." A creepy face becomes frozen in the backwards world of "Pretty Ugly". A gingerbread man escapes every pursuer but a fox, who catches him by pretending to be deaf. When Jack's beanstalk grows, someone says, "There goes the view." And there are bonus pages. A picture asks you to identify "22 odd things." Another challenges you to "Find the Twins". And there's a "Joke page", with a moral that our little one might have devised: "He who laughs last thinks the slowest." Be swift.

Big Fat Little Lit has an all star cast of contributers, but it is a bit uneven in its results. Some parts are great, but others are not. The thing about it is that my kids aren't rereading it like they do with other graphic novels such as the Mighty Skullboy Army.

This collection--culled from three previous Little Lit anthologies--is, of course, literary and brilliant and oh-so-eclectic, and if you know nothing about the genre, it's an easy intro. Fairy tales nestle comfortably next to horror stories and folklore, and my four-year-old easily adapted to the diverse narrative styles and voices: after all, he could SEE the differences. Looking at the big picture, pardon the pun, I was struck by how many were told with forceful moral underpinnings. More than a few protagonists must face the gloomy consequences of their misdeeds and I didn't spot a single story where evil prevailed. Naughtiness, maybe, but not genuine eat-your-family badness. That's not to say it's all goody-two-shoes fluff. Like the original Grimm's Fairy Tales, many of these tales venture into nightmare territory, where mothers-in-law try to devour grandchildren, stuffy noses explode with dopplegangers and cute kitties come from alternate worlds, and little that seems comfortable and safe turns out to be so. I get the distinct impression these are stories written by actual parents who have braved the wild terrain of a child's imagination to chart both its twisted roads and startling flora.

Let's say that you've heard of the "Little Lit" books, edited by Art Spiegelman and his wife Francoise Mouly, but that you've never actually gone so far as to pick one up. Let us also say, while we are at it, that you are aware of the massive loads of talent that have gone into the series, but that this was still not quite enough to draw you in. Well, my lovelies, I have an answer for you. Like yourself, I somehow managed to catch a snatch of a comic strip here or a lovingly drawn panel there without actually sitting down and reading the "Little Lit" books cover to cover. Then, out of the bright blue sky, "Big Fat Little Lit" falls into my lap. So I read it through with not a little skepticism. Truth be told, I've always suspected that the books were written for adults rather than children. You can cast a book in a childish shell and claim your artists are working with the younger set in mind but will kids actually read what you create? Slowly I've come to the conclusion that yes, there is definitely an audience for this series that is under the age of 21. Still, if you're gonna hand them a "Little Lit" collection, better to go for the best. Give them a compendium of selected past works. Give them "Big Fat Little Lit", the best of the best, and save yourself some time. Behold before you thirty-six comics created by thirty-three "of the world's most beloved authors and artists", or so says the backflap. Compiled from parts of the three "Little Lit" collections already in existence (with some extra goodies for spice) "Big Fat Little Lit" has it all. Ghouls and fools and fables both traditional and with a twist all working together to fill this 144 page beauty. You'll find old classics like Crockett Johnson's, "Barnaby" alongside all new tales by people as varied as Daniel Clowes or David Macaulay. The result is eye-popping jaw-dropping assortment of stories of varying styles and macabre natures. Puzzles too pop up between comics that can range anywhere between one to nine pages. The sheer weight of celebrity is both a boon and an drag on enterprises like "Little Lit". On the one hand, adults like me are bound to go gaga over the luminaries who've worked on this puppy. Where else can you find David Sedaris working with Ian Falconer (outside of The New Yorker, of course)? Neil Gaiman and Gahan Wilson? Heck, forget the pairings. They have two William Joyce offerings, Maurice Sendak unleashed, Jules Feiffer, and God knows who else. Illustrators that work primarily in the realm of children's books like Barbara McClintok pair with kid-only authors like Lemony Snicket (as opposed to Daniel Handler, of course). Most impressive to my eyes (and proof that I never examined the original collection it appeared in closely enough) is a Walt Kelly piece. Publishers out there might do very well if they were to republish Kelly's non-Pogo related fairy tales in a compendium, seeing as how they work so nicely here and all. So that's on t