Little Lit: Folklore & Fairy Tale Funnies [With a Story-Telling Board Game Inside]

Let's face it, any child and any adult who's honest, loved the macabre and grotesque in reading and listening to fairy and folk tales while growing up. In the delicious discomfort of feeling scared and enchanted, made life a little more understandable as well as providing that "suspension of disbelief" that served to teach us the world is a far more enchanted place than authority figures and institutions would have us believe. And I do not think I'm alone in this perception, or fantasy and science fiction would not be as popular among adults as they are now. This collection by some of the world's foremost under/aboveground cartoonists transports you back to those "Grimm" days of childhood when something was alive and magic was afoot. This is too wonderful a collection for just kids. I hope the artists and editors will continue this series. Highly recommended.

Little Lit offers a fabulous and varied collection of 16 contemporary artists' comics-style interpretations of folklore and fairy-tales. The makers of comics, comix and children's picture books number among the contributors, including Art Spiegelman, Walt Kelly, David Macaulay, William Joyce, Kaz, Charles Burns, Peter Bagge (Hate), J. Otto Seibold (Olive the Other Reindeer), and Daniel Clowes (Ghost World). Each uses a unique style of sequential art to interpret a fairy tale, either an original story using traditional motifs or a familiar tale. Some of the retellings like Daniel Clowes's sequel to "Sleeping Beauty" are told in formal language, others like Barbara McClintock's "The Princess and the Pea" are tongue-in-cheek. There are familiar formatted strips along with one and two page puzzles. Chris Ware contributes a "Fairy Tale Road Rage" game to play on the endpapers, complete with push-out game pieces. The imaginatively designed and carefully produced book is in large format to allow space for even the most detailed artwork. Little Lit is a sophisticated collection masquerading as a simple children's book. It's a hybrid of childlike simplicity and adult imagination. Very highly recommended!

Where have all the old fashioned comics and comic books gone? You know, the ones with humorous and entertaining story lines, and busy, splashy pictures that kids would pore over, mesmerized, for hours. They seem to have all but disappeared. Fortunately, Art Spiegelman and Francoise Mouly have remedied this situation with their marvelously creative book, Little Lit. They've collected folklore, fairy tales, games, and puzzles from the best and brightest cartoonists, children's book authors, and illustrators and compiled them into one oversized book of endless fun. From Kaz's The Hungry Horse, and Barbara McClintock's The Princess And The Pea, Joost Swarte's The Leafless Tree, and Walt Kelly's The Gingerbread Man, to What's Wrong With This Picture, Spookyland and even an inventive board game, complete with pieces, these stories and activities range from the outrageous, to the thoughtful, silly, and funny, but all include amazing bold, and intricately detailed artwork that captures the imagination and almost spills off the pages. Perfect for youngsters 9 and older, Little Lit is an innovative treasure to read and share, that will entrance your kids and keep them busy for hours.

Good writing and good illustration always have universal appeal. Unfortunately this is something that has been forgotten in the comic book industry lately. It used to be that you could find comics that were fun reading for people of all ages, but that is a rarity these days in which comics are largely marketed to either an adult audience or to adolescent males who equate being "adult" with reading about violence and aggression and anatomically incorrect women in tights. This book (ironically labelled "Comics aren't just for adults anymore" in an echo of DC Comic's mid-1980s "Comics aren't just for kids" ad campaign) is a nice reminder of the way things used to be.All the stories are wonderfully written and illustrated. The "Jack (and his Mother) and the Beanstalk" would have been better if it diverged less from the traditional in my opinion, but "The Princess and the Pea", which takes hillarious stabs at the original story while being beautifully illustrated in a traditionally romantic style, is effective at poking fun at itself. Most of the stories have obvious morals and can just be taken at their face value, and therefore can't be read on a different level by adults, but they are still enjoyable. The one exception to this is Chris Ware's wonderful original (though depressing) fairy tale and his board game (the instructions are priceless!) which utilizes his usual sardonic and cynical sense of humour very effectively, and I agree with the reviewer below that Charles Burns' Bosch inspired double-page spread might be a little disturbing to adults, but seen through innocent eyes I believe kids will find it more humourous.

I'm a long-time fan of comic books, but I'm 38...where are the new, young readers of stories in the comic book form going to come from? There's little that's geared specifically at kids in the modern American market: most comes from Europe, like the Asterix and Tintin books. The joy of such books is their universality: they don't have to be 'written down' for kids, they can appeal to adults as well as children ("Harry Potter", anyone?). Leave it to Art Spiegelman (the acclaimed "Maus") to edit an oversized collection of 'folklore and fairy tale funnies" that will delight and amuse kids and intrigue the adults as well! There's a wide range of contemporary alternative comic book artists (Charles Burns, Kaz, Joost Swarte, Daniel Clowes, Art Spiegelman) and children's book illustrators (William Joyce, J. Otto Seibold, David Macaulay, Claude Ponti), an elaborate and beautifully-designed punchout board game by Chris Ware ("the Acme Novelty Library"), and even a hard-to-find classic story by Walt Kelly (creator of "Pogo"). The book's a beautiful package--an oversized hardcover just perfect for sprawling on the floor or crawling up in a lap with. Some of the pieces are straight-forward, somewhat twisted retellings of fairy tales and folktales, others are games or puzzles, but every one of them has a distinctive and colorful charm. You'll have your own favorites--mine are the Japanese-style, subtly-toned "Fisherman and the Sea Princess" by David Mazzucchelli and the macabre but pointedly-moral "The Hungry Horse" by Kaz--but there's stories in here for every sensibility and mood, outrageous or subtle. And don't think that just because it's 'comic-booky' that it's not great: teach your kids how to read visual storytelling, how to follow the word balloons, captions, and panel sequences, and they'll soon be ready for some of the finest the medium has to offer: 'Calvin and Hobbes,' 'Tintin,' 'Akiko,' 'The Spirit' --all of them great stories *and* storytelling, even though the characters are in little boxes talking with word balloons.