It’s been a long time since I’ve graced the pages of a book. 2005 and the book of The Glass House, which Mat and I contributed an awful lot to. (One minor exception is the Wok Book aka the obligatory joke compilation for departing writers at The Project – but there’s only two copies of that, I think.)
But now I am a bit more literally gracing the pages of a book, in cartoon form. Well, gracing might be a bit fancypants, I’m not sure David was going for grace in particular in his somehow eerily Wokkity figure (see above).
The book is SQUISHBOOK.
From what I’ve seen, it’s going to be REALLY FUN. For kids, and kids at (f)heart.
It’s been put together by the talented and lovely comic artists at Squishface Studio under the editorial guidance of David Blumenstein, and I’m thrilled to have been a contributing writer.
David collaborated with me on the guide to writing funny stories, of which you can read a bit above, and I also wrote a Table of Nontents and an opinion piece written by Your Bum, which should prove my highbrow credentials.
Around a dozen other Melbourne artists and writers have contributed too, not to mention that heaps of the book has come out of workshops with grade 2s at Kensington Primary School.
It’s a book that’s not just full of fun comics, but is also full of great advice and encouragement on how to make/write/draw comics, much of it in response to questions from kids.
A comic book about comics! So meta. I love it.
Now that the whole 80 pages are ready to read, it’s going up for a pre-order that is also acting as crowdfunding for the print run. If it sounds like something that you or some kids you know would be into, now’s the time to order a copy, or even grab one of the special bundles Squishface have put together. (They should be ready in the nick of time for Xmas.)
