Another School Library Journal Blog Reviews “Hereville”

From Brigid Alverson, of the “Good Comics For Kids” blog:

I really enjoyed Barry Deutsch’s Hereville when it was a webcomic, and I like it even better now that it’s a full-length graphic novel, which will be released by Abrams in November. Set in an Orthodox Jewish community, Hereville has a strong sense of the traditional about it, and parts of the story (as when the heroine battles a pig that has been tormenting her) are strongly reminiscent of folk tales. Deutsch breathes life into his story, though, by having characters who talk and react like real tweens and teens. She may dress differently from her peers in public school, but when 11-year-old Mirka tries to solve a math problem, or is torn between her family’s expectations and her own desires, she is channeling every kid. Deutsch’s art has lightened up quite a bit in this book, and he has honed his extraordinary talent for using panel arrangements and other visual effects to tell his story in the most effective way possible. I would go into more detail, but my 10-year-old nephew swiped the book at dinner last night and I don’t know when I’m going to get it back. Highly recommended!

Sketchbook: Self-portrait

Played around with drawing in black and white on brown paper. I want to find a way of getting sharper lines; I think I need to find some less soft brown paper.

Sketchbook: Zero Mostel

Two More Hereville Title Page Sketches

Back when I was selling the self-published comic book of Hereville, folks sometimes paid extra for their comic in order to have me do a drawing on their title page. (A similar offer is now available for folks who preorder the hardcover book). Sometimes these sketches would be requests, other times I’d just choose a theme myself.

You can see a whole bunch of Hereville title page sketches here on Flickr. And I’ve just now added two more to the set:

The second sketch is below the fold.

Continue Reading…

Another Nice Goodreads Review

Inge at Goodreads wrote:

Let’s get the obvious comments over with. Yes. This is a graphic novel where the brave heroine is an 11 year-old Orthodox Jewish girl. This is definitely not something you see every day. However, it’s not treated as a novelty, and while the reader will learn about Orthodox Judaism and its practices, it is not done in an overly didactic manner. Mirka is a bit of a rebel in some ways, but overall she’s true to her family and her beliefs without sacrificing her need for adventure.

I used to work as a librarian in a mostly Orthodox Jewish community and I have to say that my most of my patrons were voracious readers. Friday afternoons, before Shabbat, children would storm the library in droves, walking off with ten books or so a piece, and leaving bare shelves behind. It always troubled me that, while I was surrounded by so many dedicated book-lovers, the children rarely saw themselves reflected in books. Or if so, it was as a novelty/token character or they were featured in a Holocaust-related novel. Of course, there are exceptions to this rule, but I hope this graphic novel reaches that community and is well-loved.

Hereville is not exceptional merely because of its unusual protagonist, but because it’s a fun and humorous adventure. It’s well-paced and beautifully drawn. Mirka is passionate about her desire for action and adventure, but just as passionate about her love of her late mother, as well as the rest of her family. Mirka’s stepmother, Fruma, is a source hilarious entertainment, with her nagging and desperate need to argue. The troll and the witch are also sources of comedy. Last, there are many bittersweet moments concerning Mirka and her deceased mother. It’s a multi-faceted comic, offering not only adventure but depth and emotion.

In other words, I’m ready for more Mirka!

Thanks, Inge! I’ve gotta say, Inge’s reaction is exactly the reaction, in every way, I’m hoping for. 🙂

I really hope that Hereville will find some fans among Orthodox Jewish families. (Hereville the webcomic had several Orthodox readers, who made many very helpful comments.) We’ll see.

Eisner and me

In a sort of postscript to her School Library Journal review of Hereville, Elizabeth Bird mentioned Will Eisner’s landmark A Contract With God. That really, really pleased me.

I took a class from Eisner at School of Visual Arts, which is a privilege I wish I had appreciated more at the time. Eisner’s work — not so much his Spirit work, as the work he did in the last three decades of his life — is a frequent, conscious inspiration to me while I draw. Especially when it comes to drawing people, my never-met goal as a cartoonist is to make my figures as full of life as Eisner’s.

Eisner did have some weaknesses as a cartoonist, especially when it came to writing; his characterization could be thin, and his dialog was often clunky. At his worse, he used embarrassing stereotypes (don’t lend Life On Another Planet to any Italian friends you have). But his strengths — his page layouts, effortlessly leading the reader’s eye, and his astonishingly fluid, graceful drawing — put him in the top rank of all cartoonists who have ever set brush to paper.

In her review, discussing page layouts in Hereville, Elizabeth singles out a two-page sequence in which Mirka is visualizing a math problem. In that sequence, I was deliberately imitating Eisner’s 1990s work, in which he minimized the use of panel borders, instead letting elements of the panels provide the divisions between panels.

Here’s a page from Eisner’s Invisible People:

And here, for a perhaps unfortunate comparison, is one of the Hereville pages Elizabeth discussed in her review.

Related link: My 2005 obituary for Eisner.

Incredibly Kind Review of Hereville in School Library Journal!

On the School Library Journal website, blogger Elizabeth Bird posted an incredibly kind review of Hereville:

“Yet another troll-fighting 11-year-old Orthodox Jewish girl,” says the byline. Well seriously. How was I supposed to pass that up? I’d grabbed a copy of Hereville at an American Library Association conference along with a whole host of other books. I don’t think I even gave it half a glance at the time. Just nabbed, stuffed, and scooted. It was only back in the comfort of my hotel room as I repacked my bags that the byline got my attention. I sat down for a quick look. Twenty minutes later I was still reading, with no intention at all of repacking anything until I was done. In my experience, fantasy novels for children do not like to involve religion in any way, shape, or form. And children’s graphic novels? Puh-leeze. You’re as likely to find a copy of Babymouse wax rhapsodic on the topic of organized religion as you are a copy of Harry Potter. So to read Barry Deutsch’s book is to experience a mild marvel. There is religion, fantasy, knitting, some of the best art I’ve seen since The Secret Science Alliance, and a story that actually makes you sit up and feel something. This is like nothing I’ve ever encountered before, and I think it’s truly remarkable. Without a doubt, this is the best graphic novel of 2010 for kids. Bar none. […]

Confession: Truth be told, there is very little in this book I do not like. What’s more, it offers me, a children’s librarian, a sneaky way to introduce kids to religions and creeds they might not otherwise have any exposure to in a format they already love. Bereft of any kind of stereotyping you might name, Hereville: How Mirka Got Her Sword could only make me angry if it failed to produce a sequel in the future. Until then, we’ll just have to be content with this. A remarkable little book and, I guarantee, like nothing else you have on your bookstore, library, or personal shelves.

There’s a lot more to her review, but you’ll have to click through to read it.

(Click here for information about preordering Hereville.)

Process: Drawing a Panel of Hereville

I drew Hereville on my computer, using a Cintiq tablet, which is a kind of interactive pen-on-screen tool that I couldn’t possibly live without. The software I use is Photoshop CS4. I used to draw with CS2, but I upgraded to CS4 because it lets you rotate an image while you work on it.

Okay, so let’s see the sequence of drawing. The example panel here comes from page 12 of the graphic novel (I posted the pencils to page 12 here).

Mirka starts out as a stick figure. I usually start with the head, and usually draw it the same way — an eggshell shape first, then a line halfway up the egg to find the level of the eyes, then a 45-45-90 triangle to find the placement of the top of her ear. Sometimes I get lazy and just start drawing the face without those underlying lines, but then I often end up having to erase and start over, so that’s not the best idea.

Then I do a couple of lines to show the placement of her body and the set of her shoulders. This may not seem like much, but it’s actually really important — in a panel like this, where we only see Mirka’s head and shoulders and a little of her trunk, the set of the shoulders is going to do a lot of the work of conveying Mirka’s expression. It’s not uncommon for me to redraw the initial stickfigure “shoulder line” two or three times trying to get it right. In this case, I opt for slumped shoulders, as if the surprise has made her go limp, combined with leaning forward.

Then I added scribbly lines to to show her hair and clothes, and different parts of her body, and more details of her face. Scribble, scribble, scribble, erase, scribble, erase. I erased and redrew a lot at this stage, until Mirka finally looked “right” to my eyes. I don’t use photo reference for figures unless I’m absolutely unable to draw the pose otherwise, and in this case the pose was easy so no need for reference.

Then I drew in the word balloon. I draw all my word balloons freehand, rather than using premade shapes, but in this case I tried to be especially all over the place drawing the balloon, to convey Mirka’s shock and excitement.

At first, I thought that was pretty good. But over time I realized that it wasn’t working for me. Sheila, my editor at Abrams, agreed with me: The drawing didn’t have enough oomph to show how awestruck Mirka felt when she first saw the witch’s tower.

I tried again, this time giving Mirka a more stunned expression. (This is where a cartoony drawing style really comes in handy!). I also changed the “Oh wow” speech bubble to an exclamation point graphic. And I rotated the whole drawing so that she seemed to be leaning back to look up, since the tower ended up being quite tall. (So much for the leaning forward! Oh, well.)

Better. But still not there. And the exclamation point graphic I created looked jumbled and confusing to me, rather than conveying an emotion clearly.

So instead of an exclamation point over her head, I put Mirka in an exclamation-point-shaped panel border. (Doing this cropped out the set of the shoulders I worked on earlier. Oh, well!) I also enlarged the drawing of Mirka a little.

And now my internal “how stunned does Mirka look”-ometer said that this worked. So now it’s time to go on to “inking.”

Of course, since I’m doing all this drawing on computer, there’s no literal “ink” involved. But there’s still a stage where I draw the panel using solid black lines, trying to keep the lines as lively as I can without losing accuracy. Then I send a copy of the page to Jake, and Jake adds colors, using Photoshop on his computer.

And finally, the completed panel!

(Remember, Hereville is now available for preorder!)

Elizabeth Bird’s review of “Hereville” for School Library Journal.com

This review was originally published on the Fuse 8 Productions Blog on School Library Journal’s website. It’s written by Elizabeth Bird, who is currently New York Public Library’s Youth Materials Collections Specialist.

“Yet another troll-fighting 11-year-old Orthodox Jewish girl,” says the byline. Well seriously. How was I supposed to pass that up? I’d grabbed a copy of Hereville at an American Library Association conference along with a whole host of other books. I don’t think I even gave it half a glance at the time. Just nabbed, stuffed, and scooted. It was only back in the comfort of my hotel room as I repacked my bags that the byline got my attention. I sat down for a quick look. Twenty minutes later I was still reading, with no intention at all of repacking anything until I was done. In my experience, fantasy novels for children do not like to involve religion in any way, shape, or form. And children’s graphic novels? Puh-leeze. You’re as likely to find a copy of Babymouse wax rhapsodic on the topic of organized religion as you are a copy of Harry Potter. So to read Barry Deutsch’s book is to experience a mild marvel. There is religion, fantasy, knitting, some of the best art I’ve seen since The Secret Science Alliance, and a story that actually makes you sit up and feel something. This is like nothing I’ve ever encountered before, and I think it’s truly remarkable. Without a doubt, this is the best graphic novel of 2010 for kids. Bar none.

Mirka has a dream, but it’s not the kind of thing that gets a lot of support. More than anything else in the entire world she wants to fight dragons. The problem? She’s eleven, a girl, and she lives in the Jewish Orthodox town of Hereville. Still, Mirka gets a bit closer to her dream when she incurs the wrath of a witch’s pig, then does it a good deed, thereby indebting its witch to her. As it turns out, the witch tells Mirka that there is a good sword in the neighborhood, but the only way to get it is to defeat a troll. And when push comes to shove, Mirka’s going to have to use all her smarts and cunning to defeat an enemy that prizes one of the arts she loathes the most.

Think about children’s fantasy novels and religion for a moment. Religion in fantasies for kids tends to skew one of three ways. You can incorporate it and make it the entire point of the novel (Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials, the Narnia books of C.S. Lewis, or Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time series which is technically science fiction anyway). You can make up an entirely new religion of your own (as in the novels of Frances Hardinge, Tamora Pierce, Megan Whalen Turner, etc.). Or you just sorta forget about it. Remember, in the Harry Potter novels there may be churches and Christmas, but when wizards marry there’s only a vague representative of some unnamed religion presiding. And children’s graphic novels are in such an infant phase at this point that religion never even comes up half the time. The Bone books by Jeff Smith aren’t about to launch into a treatise of religious doctrines (though Phoney Bone does strike me as a Calvinist at his core).

So Hereville is remarkable right off the bat because it isn’t afraid. It says, “Yeah, I’m gonna incorporate religion into this book. Heck, I’m even gonna TEACH about the religion of Orthodox Jews while I’m at it.” And darned if Deutsch doesn’t! Though Hereville itself might be a made up town inhabited entirely by practitioners of this religion, what we learn all is true and accurate. From the different ways girls can be rebellious, pious, or popular in their near identical school clothes to Shabbos to what the three braids of the khale represent (truth, peace, and justice), it’s all in there without ever sounding like you’re being taught something. The religion is integral to the story and you wouldn’t want it any other way.

Deutsch’s storytelling, which is also above par, makes this book very much a hero’s quest. However, to defeat her enemy, the troll, Mirka must use a set of skills she acquired at the beginning of this book. What I love is that the skill that comes to her aid isn’t her lamentable knitting (the troll insists on a knitting challenge, which Mirka is slightly less than able to do) but rather the art of debate as acquired from her stepmother. It’s the power of prevarication at work. At the same time, you’ve grown to really care for Mirka and her family. Even when she does bad things, you still understand where she’s coming from. There’s a sequence where she’s hurting her little brother, and the storyline flashes between her actions and images of her mother telling her years ago that she is responsible for keeping him safe. You realize then that Mirka is a real person with dimensions and faults, which is something I always like to find in my middle grade comic fare.

And then there’s the art itself. The longer I study it the more remarkable I find it. Sometimes it’s just very basic things. The moments when Deutsch chooses to switch between eyes that are merely black dots with eyebrows and when those eyes acquire whites and pupils is key to understanding the book. Then there are the little things you might not even notice. If two characters are talking and one is reluctant to say something, Deutsch might take a beat to have that character flip a braid away that was creeping down her shoulder in the previous panels. There are even times when it seems as though there’s a slight manga influence on the book. Not in terms of the look, of course, but more the reaction shots. Mirka staring daggers at Rochel takes on a literal meaning in one panel. In another, Mirka yelling at Zindel to wake up takes the form of a huge panel that literally pushes him to one side.

Can I take a moment to wax rhapsodic about the layouts on these pages too? I mean, this is an art. A true art. Deutsch is so good at breaking up the panels and playing with them. In my favorite sequence, Mirka visualizes a math problem. She’s in a situation where she has two friends over and has already cut a cake into thirds. Then a third friend comes over and she has to find a way to divide the thirds equally amongst four people. That situation takes up two pages but in each one there are multiple Mirkas to keep track of. You manage to do it, though, because of the ways in which Deutsch knows to command your eyeballs. You look exactly where you are supposed to, thanks to his cunning art. These are the sorts of things kids take for granted, but they’re often difficult to achieve. And it’s certainly some of the most sophisticated art I’ve seen in a children’s graphic novel, that’s for sure.

Plus I’m a sucker for little details. Since everyone in town has to essentially wear the same clothes, Deutsch finds ways to reclothe Mirka in appropriate ways. From word problems to her final sweater, Mirka’s clothing is important. And I loved other details as well. The ways in which Gittel looks like her dead mother while Rochel definitely has the beginnings of Fruma’s nose.

Oh. And he also draws really good hands. Knitting hands, hands lighting candles, you name it. I like hands and they are hard to draw. So. There’s that.

Confession: Truth be told, there is very little in this book I do not like. What’s more, it offers me, a children’s librarian, a sneaky way to introduce kids to religions and creeds they might not otherwise have any exposure to in a format they already love. Bereft of any kind of stereotyping you might name, Hereville: How Mirka Got Her Sword could only make me angry if it failed to produce a sequel in the future. Until then, we’ll just have to be content with this. A remarkable little book and, I guarantee, like nothing else you have on your bookstore, library, or personal shelves.

Jane Yolen Praises Hereville!

A very nice recommendation from a very admired writer. Thank you, Ms. Yolen!

“An unusual eleven-year-old orthodox Jewish girl with more chutzpa than Yentl seeks a magic sword, and has an epic battle with a troll, as author/illustrator Barry Deutsch offers up a mitzvah–a graphic novel which has joy, style, lots of Yiddishkeit, adventure, and magic. Not all of it kosher! (There is a goyisch pig after all.)”

—Jane Yolen, author of The Devil’s Arithmetic, Naming Liberty, and O Jerusalem as well as the graphic novel, Foiled.

(Remember, Hereville is now available for preorder!)