Yesterday, I spent seven long hours waiting at JFK Airport, trying to get back home from a quick weekend away in Florida. When faced with so many hours in an airport, I don’t read. I people watch.
I saw more Kindles than I ever have in my life: three. I was curious about these Kindle readers, so I tried to speak with each of them. Only one was interested in talking to me.
I was curious what he was reading and was very surprised to hear he was reading a Louis L’Amour novel. He actually whispered it, telling me, “I would never go to a store to buy this.” He loves his Kindle.I asked if he still went to bookstores and he said somewhat sheepishly, no. This echoes what my family in Florida said, too. I was worried about this, then I looked around the gate area.
The three Kindle readers had stopped reading and were just looking around, as if they needed a break from the screen. All the other book readers, and there must have been about thirty readers at my gate, had their heads down, happily turning pages, fairly oblivious to the chaos around them.
One other thing I didn’t see was anyone recharging their book. Not beholden to the proximity of outlets, the book readers were literally strewn about. (Before folks get mad at me, I understand the battery life of the Kindle is long, but at some point they do need to be recharged.)
Are books dead? Hardly. But it’s clear to me at least, who lives in a very bookstore-friendly state, that the e-reader is creeping into the larger book reading world. The Borders here at the airport even sells preloaded Sony e-readers.
One last quick scan of the gate revealed book readers outnumbering Kindle owners by ten to one. That’s a number I can live with, I think.

Many moons ago, Sandy Lemon, one of the local teachers I have the great pleasure of working with, introduced me to CricketSam, her husband’s blog about life as a stay-at-home dad caring for their twin girls, who in a few months will be starting (gasp!) kindergarten. I have since become a frequent reader of Stephan’s very entertaining blog and a big fan of both Stephan’s humor and his daughters’ antics. Thinking you all might become the same and realizing it’s rare that we post the perspectives of actual kids on this blog, I asked Stephan if he and the girls might want to review a book or two for ShelfTalker. They jumped at the chance and walked out of my office with a pile of F&G’s for forthcoming picture books. What follows is their review of Pink Me Up by Charise Mericle Harper (Random House, February 2010). Along the lines of “Clap if you believe in fairies,” please comment below if you would like to see the Lemon family make more such contributions!
And now, heeeeeere’s Stephan!
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My name is Stephan Lemon. I am a writer, fervent reader, and, more importantly, a stay-at-home dad to twin 4-year-old girls Cricket and Samantha. My girls and I are honored to be reviewing children’s books that will be available in the coming weeks and months. After years of reading the same books over and over and over and over again (parents, can I get an Gahhhhh!), getting some fresh advance-copy action is just about the best thing in the history of ever. Plus, Cricket and Sam are perfect for this task. Just two months shy of their 5th birthdays, they are experts at rendering judgment on a wide range of topics and have an opinion on everything.
The emasculation I experience on a near daily basis from our girls and our two cats – another set of twin girls – leaves me a broken and bitter shell of a man. Happily, my wife, Sandy, is a saint of a woman who acts as a counterweight and gives balance to my life (He shoots! He scores! Marital points!), and fortunately I have the ability to mine the forces acting upon me for comedy gold I can then put to use for my family blog, my fledgling design business and the book I’ve been threatening to write – a book with a title so wondrously cool that I cannot share it for fear that it fall into the hands of another broken and bitter shell of a man before I can publish. (Maybe someday I’ll have a measureable level of content that will rival the wondrously cool title.)
I know what you’re thinking right now. It’s either Wow, this guy’s life is REALLY exciting! or I’m actually not getting this time back, am I? But it’s not about us. It’s about the kids and the books. I’m just impressed you’ve followed me this far! Let’s keep going.

The first book to get the CricketSam treatment is Pink Me Up by Charise Mericle Harper. The girls were drawn to this book from the beginning, choosing it, based purely on the cover, from a lineup of 8 other new books.
The opening page of the story reads “Today is a special Mama-and-me day. Today is the day of the PINK GIRLS PINK-NIC.”
Oh boy, this is where the “Daddy Dilemma” kicks in, as I’m left reading a book, delightful as it may be, that by all appearances should be read by a mother to a daughter. But fortunately 4-year-olds don’t care about such things, and I really don’t mind either since this allows me to walk hand-in-hand with my feminine side and, truth be told, the feminine me is SO much nicer than the regular me.
Returning to the story, our pink-obsessed main bunny (who curiously goes unnamed, to the dismay of my girls) has her hopes of a wonderful day at the pink picnic dashed when her mother falls ill with – egads! – Pink Spots! (Who knew pink could be so debilitating?) This leads to a moment the girls know all too well, as our heroine falls, crying, to the floor. So familiar are my daughters with this type of scene that in fact they finished reading the final sentence on the page for me… “Today. Is. The. Worst. Day,” I began… then “EVER!” they chimed, as I ran my finger over the word.
It is at this point where Pink Me Up takes a turn for the Awesome! as we find out who will escort our pinkster to the picnic. None other than… DADDY! (Wait. What? Daddy? Really? I know, even my girls were surprised.) “It’s a PINK girl party!” our young bunny exclaims. “Boys are NOT pink!”
I ask Sam and Cricket what they think is going to happen next. They agree that Daddy is not worthy and the story will end in despair, which is TOTALLY not the right answer. When prompted again, they deduce that maybe Daddy will find pink clothes and be able to accompany his daughter to the picnic.
After the bunny successfully “pinks up” her dad with a combination of stickers, markers and tape (those pink-striped pants are SO slimming) she holds his hand on the way to the picnic because “he is not used to being pink.” To me, this line best demonstrates the psyche of the 4-year-old, as my girls are accustomed to treating me as a helpless automaton that requires constant attention for even the smallest of tasks. But hey, pink-striped pants!
Cheerily, everyone at the picnic LOVES the pink dad, leading to many other dads getting “pinkified” at future events. Our pinkster, flush with confidence, dreams of a world in which – GOOD LORD – everything is pink.
I selfishly liked this book because Daddy saves the day but appreciate that the main character overcomes adversity and is part of the solution, which is a good message for the kids.
The girls liked that the stuffed carrot is always smiling. Unbelievable.
Final assessment? Three thumbs up for Pink Me Up.

Some would say the secret to a good book fair is not to do them. Fewer and fewer independent stores are doing in-school book fairs these days because the cost/benefit ratio is dwindling to such a degree that they can be a losing proposition. Book fairs are a complex thing for an indie bookseller to do well, and here are some tips that might help out.
* Work with one person from the PTO. Having more than one point person can make things confusing and needlessly complicated. Make sure there’s one store contact person as well. Confidence builds when there is a solid relationship between school and store.
* Be clear about expectations. How much money is the school hoping to raise? What will the school do to ensure the success of the book fair? The school administration needs to ensure that all the kids and their families, not only know about the book fair, but will given adequate time during the school day to shop for books.  Nothing ruins a book fair than kids strolling amid the books with no money because their parents didn’t know what day the book fair was.
* Draw up a contract that clearly states what everyone’s responsibilities are. How will damaged books be dealt with? It is much better to have a simple document that makes clear what happens if books are stolen, missing, or damaged during the fair, than to discuss it after a box of books goes missing. Also, a contract makes the store look more professional and it lets the school know what exactly you are doing.
* Make sure the parent organization has enough volunteers to run the book fair before it begins. Nothing is more frustrating to the PTO than having an understaffed book fair. I’ve seen book fairs where the main parent volunteer not only never leaves the fair, but has checked in and set up the entire book fair and packs it up on her own.
* Be very clear up front how the school will benefit from book sales. Will they get 15% in cash or 20% in store credit?
* If your staff is able to go into the school the week preceding the book fair for booktalks, sales will rise immeasurably. In addition to booktalks, if someone can generate a flyer with the booktalked items on it that kids can take home then they’re more likely to bring money for those books.
* Don’t have a book fair that’s either too short or too long. A week-long, in-school book fair is probably too long for most schools to staff. One day is a recipe for failure. Two days with a kick-off dinner can be a really successful. Sometimes getting a local author can help jump-start a book fair and can generate a lot of excitement.
* I know it sounds ridiculous, but schedule the book fair when the kids are in school. We once had the misfortune of having a book fair scheduled during parent/teacher conferences and it was the one of the worst book fairs ever.
* If you’re trying to get into a school that has traditionally only done Scholastic Book Fairs, stress that your store is better positioned to choose books that are geared for that specific school because you know them. I’ve worked with schools who didn’t want to give up the Scholastic Fair, so I suggested having two fairs: one using us and one Scholastic. If both book fairs are marketed well, they can both be money makers for the school.
I’ve had great book fairs, and not-so-great book fairs. One thing we’ve started to focus on is doing book fairs for schools close enough to the store so that those families can be become new customers. A book fair is a great way for folks to get to know your store and what you can offer the community, which can a long lasting ripple effect of good will.

We all know that this summer’s big book will be the third and final book in the Hunger Games series, Mockingjay. The release date is five months away and already the price wars have begun for pre-orders at the online retailers.  All the big web stores are offering the book for pre-sale at discounts ranging from 44% to a whopping 53%, bringing the book to well below what any bookstore can purchase it for.
This aggressive discounting brings up many emotions in me. Chief among them is despair. It’s hard to see the biggest book of the year, and one I cannot wait to read myself, being so deeply discounted seemingly everywhere I turn.  The second emotion is anger. Anger that once again indies are potentially going to get scooped by companies using the book that can make our year, as their loss leader, and in doing so is devaluing the work itself.
The good thing about anger is it spurs action. I am so irritated by all the places I’m competing with that I’m just going to dig and fight for my little corner of the summer’s hot book.  Can I sell the book at 53% off? No. Can I sell it for 44% off? No, again. But I can offer my customers an easy way to order the book locally and save. For a book like Mockingjay that had special orders for it ever since the week after Catching Fire came out, I am offering a staggered pre-order discount for my customers.
Here’s what I’m going to do for fans of the series. If you pre-order and pre-pay for Mockingjay anytime between now and April 30th you will save 35%, buy it between May 1st and May 31st you can save 30%, after that the discount goes down to 20% until the release date.  We’ve never had a staggered discount schedule for a hot book, but never have we had such aggressive competition from so many places.
Bold signage at each register will alert people to this plan and hopefully, they will decide on the spot to pre-order their book with us. The more they pre-order, the better my cash flow is, and the better able I’ll be to know exactly how many Mockingjays to order, because all the outlets for this book are making me really think about the size of my order. And having some pre-orders in the system will be a real guide for me and help me order smartly.
One thing that we have going for us, that few of the web stores do, is that our party won’t be virtual. It will be live and loads of fun, and if you bought your book from us, there might be something extra special in it for you.

This post isn’t about beautiful books, but about books that have been transformed into other art forms. When some artists look at books, they see possibilities even beyond the worlds invented by the books’ authors. From pop-up creations that come to life to cut-out witticisms (rolling paper waves and a ship “sailing” out of a copy of Treasure Island), these paper innovations make my jaw drop. How about yours?
Even the projects that require books to be destroyed (sacrilege! murder!) result in such incredible works of art that I can suppress the horror and simply marvel. And it’s already an old joke, but it must be made: try doing *this* with an e-reader.
After the paper-arts videos, you’ll see another extremely impressive book-related kind of art: artist Althea Crome talking about the miniature sweaters she knitted for the Coraline movie. (Thanks to YA novelist Chris Tebbetts for the link!)
Do you have any favorite book-arts images or links to share? (The comments field doesn’t allow full links, but I think you can enter anything that comes after http://www.)

Bookstores don’t have events only at the store. Events now come in all shapes and sizes and in all venues. This spring and summer we’re having a variety of events off-site. I’ll mention them here and then do a follow-up report in the summer.
The first event is at a local library in South Burlington, which is hosting the wonderful Julia Alvarez in April. Julia asked for us to sell books at the event. I love that Julia asked for an independent store for sales help, especially when there’s a Barnes and Noble 500 feet from the the library. She gets it. And she knows that we’ll donate a portion of the day’s sales to the library. We get signed books (we always bring more than we think we’ll sell) and the library gets a great event and hopeful makes some serious money. Additionally, while I sell books I get to listen to Julia speak, which is always magical and inspiring.
Our second library event is purely altruistic: We’re just helping the Williston library get an illustrator, in this case it’s Harry Bliss for their big Reading Day Celebration in April. This is not a book sales event, but it IS certainly our pleasure to see if we can help a local library reach out to someone they might not know. This type of event goes under the “building a community” heading.  It’s a phone call or email for us and it’s a pleasure to help a local library have a great day.The third event is a ticketed dinner at our favorite restaurant, Bistro Sauce in Shelburne. We’ve been wanting to do something with them since we moved our store to Shelburne, and finally we’ve found the time to plan. In the middle of April we’ll have a “best of the new” preview event for as many book groups that want to attend. We’ll booktalk some of the hot new paperbacks and hardcovers coming out during the late spring and summer. Our goal here is to get readers excited about new books. Each attendee will be given a coupon they can use to purchase any of the books we mentioned at a discount. We want this to be a fun event that they’ll talk about and hopefully, we’ll become the go-to store for all book group members, not just the few who already shop here. We’d like to create buzz for both the restaurant and the bookstore.
Lastly, several towns away, in Panton, there’s the Basin Harbor Club, a vacation/resort set on a lake. They want to create a speaker’s night featuring local authors and some daytime kids’ events. They have a built-in audience of vacationers who just want to relax and have their entertainment come to them. We will help arrange evenings of teaching stand-up comedy, picture book writing seminars, and several events with Vermont authors. We’ll also work with their kitchen staff to do a “favorite cookbook” dinner.
The beauty of this arrangement is they will sell the books for us at the event if we’re unable to, and they’ll keep the signed books for sale in the gift shop for the duration of the summer; it’s like having a tiny satellite store. So, with this one venue we will have six to eight events that are not a drain on my staff. We’ll make the resort more enticing to potential guests by having some truly stellar events, and we’ll all make some money.
One thing I’ve noticed already for collaborative events is everyone from all parts needs to be organized and excited about working together. Promotion needs to be done aggressively and well by both parties. Signage stating “books provided by….” need to be visible on the sales table and in any programs. Bookstores need to be equally thoughtful about promoting their partners with brochures available at the register.
I’m hopeful, maybe too much so, that these events will generate a fair amount of extra income for the store. Here’s hoping.If you or your vacation spot or local bookstore does anything fun, I’d love to hear about it.

Writing is a strange and often humbling business. You hang your own personal thoughts, opinions, ideas, and observations in a place where the world can see them, and sometimes the world responds the way you think it will, and sometimes it does not. What you can’t guess or predict, though, is what a future world will think, or how future readers might be impacted by something you’ve said. Especially not when they’re responding to a thing you didn’t really KNOW you were writing about in the first place.
When PW first approached me about starting this blog, I knew I was being offered a remarkable opportunity — one that might open all sorts of doors for me, both professionally and personally. For the past three years I’ve been pleased to find that it’s allowed me the opportunity to open doors for OTHER people too. I suppose I never really realized, though, that it might help some people close doors that have been open for them, and that that too might be a good thing.
In March of 2007 I was a brand new blogger — still plenty wet behind the ears. On the 22nd day of that month, I wrote my fifth post for this blog, and I wrote it about something not immediately related to books, per se, and not really all that important. Or so I thought. Gareth was out of town, we got hit by a snowstorm, I was out shoveling, and a stranger with a snowplow plowed the end of our driveway for me without my asking. That was all. This singular and unexpected act of kindness, though, was enough to send me to my keyboard and prompt me to blog about it. Wanting to thank him or return his favor in some fashion, I tried briefly to locate and contact the man whose name (Tom Taverna) was stenciled on the door of his snowplow, but I wasn’t successful.
Then, almost three years later, Tom Taverna’s friends and family found me.
On Thursday, January 28, 2010, I received the following message on Facebook, from a complete stranger:

“I read your article that was sent to me by a friend on ‘The kindness of strangers’ which was published in Publishers Weekly. I just wanted to thank you for the kind story on Tom Taverna. He was a friend of mine and a wonderful person. Life just became too overbearing for Tom with the decline in work and his financial issues with his divorce and how he missed his 3 young daughters so dearly. He came from a large family and saw 3 of his siblings pass also. Tom killed himself last week and tonight is his wake. I will be leaving shortly to attend but I wanted to just say thank you from the bottom of my heart. May God bless you always.”

(You can read the death notice for Thomas P. Taverna here.)
I was heartsick to get this message. Heartsick, and humbled too. I promptly went back and looked at my “The Kindness of Strangers” post, where I found that several people had added recent comments — all of them Tom’s friends and family, with whom I now had more than one thing in common.
A year ago I wrote here about my own experience with losing one of my closest friends to suicide. In the days immediately following my friend’s death I dug through all my scrapbooks, photo albums, and journals, trying to find and hold onto every possible reminder of him. Like Tom Taverna’s friends, I trolled the web looking for any possible mention of the person I was missing so desperately. I wanted to be reminded of every little thing he’d ever said, even if it wasn’t to me. I wanted to clutch every remaining piece of his life — every tangible or intangible scrap — in the absence of the real thing. As a result, even random pieces of paper or haphazard mentions of his name felt like a comfort to me. And actual letters from my friend or articles about him — things that said something about his character, said something about the lives he’d touched, or enabled me to picture him more fully again? Those were better than just gifts — those were an actual comfort. It now seems that my post about Tom Taverna has become one of those too.
Words have lives. It is easy to forget this fact. But what appears on the page (or screen) has a life that extends beyond the reach of both the writer and the present time. Who knows what you are capturing when you put your pen to paper or press your fingers to the keyboard? Who knows what lives you are about to touch, change, or capture?
My heart goes out to Tom Taverna’s friends and family. I didn’t know Tom but his singular act of kindness made a permanent impression on me, and I am now so very glad that I took the time and opportunity to write about it.
In some strange cosmic way it appears that maybe I *did* repay Tom for his favor after all.

No, you’re not seeing double. New photos of spines have been uploaded in this version of the ghost post from Monday. Since the blog tool changeover at PW caused this post not to be listed in the Children’s Bookshelf or PW Daily, we’re trying again. I took the opportunity to fix some formatting issues and put in much better images of the 2010 ARC spines. So — here goes.
So many booksellers and librarians weighed in on book spines in my recent post, What You Wish They Knew: A Conversation Between Authors, Publishing Folks, and Booksellers, that I realized this was a subject that deserved its own post.
While spines seem less important than front covers, they are in fact often a reader’s first visual impression of a book. (There just isn’t room for most books to be displayed face-out in bookstores and libraries.) Book designers can do a lot to help their books get noticed on a crowded shelf.  From years of staring at spines while shelving books and helping customers find them, booksellers and librarians will probably agree on a few general truisms about spines. (Take these with a grain of salt, of course; sometimes the exceptions to these rules can be striking. But usually, um, not.)
THINGS THAT MAKE BOOKSELLERS, LIBRARIANS, AND CUSTOMERS HAPPY:
Clear, easy-to-find series numbers are a must on spines. (This was the most often-requested item in the “What You Wish They Knew” post.) As one bookseller commented in that prior post: “Of course, sometimes what was intended to be a stand-alone may later end up becoming a series, but at the very least make it very clear which book came first, second, etc. when the sequel(s) pub.” Booksellers and librarians can’t express heartily enough how often readers get frustrated in their search for these numbers.
High contrast between text and background color = high readability. I know everyone learns this on day one of design school, but sometimes it may get lost in the pursuit of beauty. Which is a choice, but not necessarily a great one for book sales. High contrast and fine art can co-exist, too, of course.
Large fonts really, really stand out, and make a book so much easier to find, it’s absurd.
Keep the author, title, and series elements high on the spine — this one’s for the librarians. All library books need room for spine labels on the bottom 1-2 inches; too often, the label covers up the series number or part of the title.
High contrast between text and background color = high readability. I know everyone learns this on day one of design school, but sometimes it may get lost in the pursuit of beauty. Which is a choice, but not necessarily a great one for book sales. High contrast and fine art can co-exist, too, of course.
Large fonts really, really stand out, and make a book so much easier to find, it’s absurd.
Keep the author, title, and series elements high on the spine — this one’s for the librarians. All library books need room for spine labels on the bottom 1-2 inches; too often, the label covers up the series number or part of the title.



Consider making the spine color match the front cover. When librarians and booksellers and customers search for books, color is the first thing the eye scans for.

If a book has a bright yellow cover, we rarely remember that it has a black spine. There are exceptions to this; for example, this edition of Superfudge by Judy Blume (pictured at right) has a bright green cover and a bright orange spine, but the title is so high-contrast, and its font so large and readable, that there’s no danger of losing this title on the shelf.

On ARCs, put the release date clearly on the spine. (Preferably horizontally; ideally though not necessarily along thetop.) This is hugely helpful not only to booksellers, but to book reviewers. Children’s book publishers have become much better than adult trade publishers about doing this, but the few holdouts would really help their books by joining in. One reviewer commenting on the earlier post admitted that she actually has “resorted to tossing out ARCs with no detectable pub date because they muck up my system too much.”
Do some field testing of your own. Visit libraries and bookstores and stare at spines. Offer to help a browsing customer in a book search, and observe what you focus on while you look. Slip a mock-up of your cover in among the books on the shelf where it would actually be found. Not every spine will be at eye level; see what your spine looks like up a shelf, down two shelves, and see how that affects its readability. Forgive me if this is an obvious tip, but it’s sort of like reading your own writing aloud: by experiencing your work in a different context, you can catch things you otherwise might miss.
CAVEATS:
Watch out for fancy fonts. Titles in script, for example, are rarely readable on a spine.
Images on a spine — pictures or graphic flourishes — can be a great draw for a reader’s eye. However, if the picture is small enough that readers need to squint to see it, it’s probably more effective to spend that spine space on a larger font size for the text.
Use spine colors to help customers differentiate between different volumes of a series. As Joanne Fritz commented in the prior post: “If you print three volumes in a row of a series and use the same color cover, it’s nearly impossible for us to shelve or for customers to distinguish. As an example, check out the spines of Vols 9, 10 and 11 of Guardians of Ga’hoole by Kathryn Lasky. Sorry to single out Scholastic here, because I’m sure all the major publishers are guilty of this. Make each volume a different color than the one before or the one after.”
Metallic inks: These can be tricky. For example, while Beautiful Creatures photographs brightly, its low-contrast color combo (a subtle metallic orchid against black) can almost disappear in normal lighting. Another issue with metallic inks, librarian Maggie mentioned in the prior post, is that “recently we’ve been getting some children’s books with just the spine of the book in a ‘cloth’ material with the title imprinted in metallic ink. That is very unappealing and definitely will not last. Would love to know the reasoning behind that.” Metallic inks engraved on spines can wear off, which isn’t a problem in a bookstore, but can seriously diminish a book’s library appeal.
FURTHER THOUGHTS:
Which font orientation on the spine is best? We’ve seen great examples of all different styles: traditional left-to-right style, horizontal style, even single-letter drop-style. (This is my term for it; what do designers call it?? In searching for the answer to that question, I came across a fabulous blog by a youth services librarian with a graphic design background: JacketWhys: Children’s and YA Book Covers, which didn’t provide an answer to that question but  featured books with terrific cover and spine designs, and mentioned a font orientation I hadn’t even thought about: diagonal! (It was on an adult title, Michael Dobbs’ One Minute to Midnight. Scroll down his post for a photo.).
Everything’s relative. No two bookshelves will have exactly the same combination of titles next to one another. While you design your books individually, they ‘live’ on shelves collectively, and so some spines that work well in a lineup of one publishing house’s YA shelf might look completely different on a shelf filled with a bunch of books from other houses. The secret lies in creating a strong spine that can withstand a variety of contexts.
I took some photos of a few shelves of 2010 ARCs. Some are taken very close up, some from a few feet away (the distance a bookstore browser is likely to be). Take a look at what pops out at you, what is invisible, what is clear and what is cluttered. Notice how light affects visibility; I included two photos (last two pictured) of the Beautiful Creatures spine, the first with a flash, the second without, so you can see the difference in readability in different lights.  Notice the different font treatments and design elements; some of the most beautiful spines are the hardest to read, and some of the most utilitarian, the easiest. Some books with narrow spines have more readable titles than those on wide spines.
There are so many creative, artistic designs. Book designers, you rock.  Happy browsing, everyone.
Booksellers, librarians, readers, and book designers — what are your spinal thoughts and observations?

Alison Morris alerted me to this book reading video from Ocoee Middle School in Ocoee, Florida. The Black Eyed Peas would be proud. I just love these kids, all happy and reading. It’s wonderful that the school is giving the kids time to create these fun videos about reading. Enjoy.

I am in love. With an axe-wielding police officer and his flute-wielding partner. Yes, I said “flute-wielding.” But really the flute is a recorder. And the flute-wielder is actually a dinosaur soldier. At least until he becomes an avocado. With a horn. And… Wait. What were we talking about again? Oh, yeah – Axe Cop. The awesomest web comic EVER.
Axe Cop is the brainchild of 29 year-old comics artist Ethan Nicolle and his 5-year-old brother Malachai. Yes, you read that right. Malachai is 5 years old. Which is half the reason this comic is so awesome. The other half is that Ethan has a brilliant sense of comic timing, mad drawing skills, and the ability to edit his brother’s stream of consciousness storytelling without losing the “my ideas are strung together with no filler” essence of being five.
So, just how did Axe Cop come about? At one point Ethan was home visiting his parents, and (as he explains on the Axe Cop website), “During the visit Malachai was running around with his toy fireman axe and he said he was playing ‘Axe Cop.’ He asked me to play with him, and I asked what my weapon was… so he brought me a toy flute (actually a recorder). I told him I would rather be Axe Cop then Flute Cop, and he seemed just fine with being Flute Cop. The story that followed became more and more brilliant, until I couldn’t contain myself and I had to draw the whole thing into a one page comic.”
That first page became five and then those five became several more after Ethan posted them online and the series gained a following. Today Malachai and Ethan are still collaborating on the comics and posting them to a dedicated (and deadpan) Axe Cop website where, for free, you can (and will) LAUGH uproariously at the madcap adventures that spring from Malachai’s very young mind and are expertly captured by Ethan. I recommend starting with Episode 1 and continuing from there. OR… you can watch Episode 1 as a “Motion Comic” right here, by way of YouTube.
If you want to laugh still harder, be sure to read the “Ask Axe Cop” section of the site too. If you like what you see, consider making a donation to Malachai’s college fund. A button on the Axe Cop front page directs you to the requisite page on PayPal.
Credit for the discovery of this genius goes to my colleague and office-mate Lorna Ruby, who learned about it from Very Short List.