Jess Smart Smiley's Blog, page 5
February 18, 2021
Read My Next Graphic Novel—FREE!
This is your invitation to be the FIRST to read my next graphic novel—for free!
There’s no catch. This is not a gimmick. I just want to hear your thoughts on my book before I send it to print. Sign up for my First Readers Club here or read on to learn more.
NOTE: NEW READERS MUST APPLY BEFORE 2/28/21. (Readers who apply after 2/28/21 will be added to the next available book.
Last year I sent out my newest unpublished book to members of The First Readers Club.
While I was happy to hear good things about the book from so many readers who enjoyed it, many other readers didn’t get the chance to check it out.
This is a second (and last) chance to read the book before it is published!
NOTE: NEW READERS MUST APPLY BEFORE 2/28/21. (Readers who apply after 2/28/21 will be added to the next available book.
This is my way of thanking you for following me and my work, and it’s a way for you to get involved in the creation of my next graphic novel in a fun and unique way. Think about it: with your thoughts and feedback, we’ll be making this book together. That’s pretty cool.
Getting involved is easy: click the link below and sign up to read the book. That’s it!
join the first readers club & read my next bookIf you’re interesting in learning how to write and draw your own comics, check out my book Let’s Make Comics! An Activity Book to Create, Write, and Draw Your Own Cartoons.
A light-hearted interactive guide to comics and cartoon-making that uses an activity book format and creatively stimulating prompts to teach the fundamentals of cartooning in a fun and easy-to-follow fashion.
From a working cartoonist and comic book making instructor, this all-ages activity book uses humorous and informative one-page comics and exercise prompts to guide young readers (and readers who are young at heart) through easy-to-master lessons on the skills needed to make comics.
The activities cover a range of essential comics-making tasks from creating expressions for characters to filling in blank panels to creating original characters and placing them in adventures of their own. Each exercise can stand on its own or work together with others in the book to stimulate creativity via the comics medium.
In the end, readers who complete the activities inside the book itself will have created several comics of their own, and will have generated many ideas for more sequential art creations.
If you’d like to read my next graphic novel for FREE and before it’s published, sign up for my First Readers Club here.
February 17, 2021
The Sprite and the Gardener
The Sprite and The Gardener
Written by Rii Abrego
Illustrated by Joe Whitt
A stunning, glittering, enchanting visual feast, focused on magic, gardening, and friendship. A simple and flowery tale for tweens.
What’s better than marveling at beautiful, completed illustrations? Getting a glimpse into the creative process!
The back of The Sprite and The Gardener comes with a handful of character sketches, cover concepts, page designs, and more.
If you’re interesting in learning how to write and draw your own comics, check out my book Let’s Make Comics! An Activity Book to Create, Write, and Draw Your Own Cartoons.
A light-hearted interactive guide to comics and cartoon-making that uses an activity book format and creatively stimulating prompts to teach the fundamentals of cartooning in a fun and easy-to-follow fashion.
From a working cartoonist and comic book making instructor, this all-ages activity book uses humorous and informative one-page comics and exercise prompts to guide young readers (and readers who are young at heart) through easy-to-master lessons on the skills needed to make comics.
The activities cover a range of essential comics-making tasks from creating expressions for characters to filling in blank panels to creating original characters and placing them in adventures of their own. Each exercise can stand on its own or work together with others in the book to stimulate creativity via the comics medium.
In the end, readers who complete the activities inside the book itself will have created several comics of their own, and will have generated many ideas for more sequential art creations.
If you’d like to read my next graphic novel for FREE and before it’s published, sign up for my First Readers Club here.
February 16, 2021
Let’s Tell a Story! (Book Review)
Let’s Tell a Story!: Space Adventure
Written by Lily Murray
Illustrated by Grace Boruch
My family loves this new series!
This fun concept book allows your little reader to make their own story using the characters, places, and surprises on each page. Filled with fun to last years and entertain generations, Let’s Tell a Story!: Space Adventure (and the new series of adventure books) is a journey you and your little ones will love.
From the publisher:
Imagine if you could have an adventure in space.
What if you could have MILLIONS of them?
With this story-building book, you can tell your own space-inspired stories, over and over again. Just read the question and choose from the vibrant pictures on the page to create a new adventure.
The book is packed full of fun, silly and exciting things for the reader to choose from, including:
Wearing an alien disguiseVisiting a planet made of cheeseTraveling with a band of singing cricketsBringing your pet rock along for the journeyBlasting off in a rocketMeeting a space pirateOnce you’ve finished, you can turn back to the start and make different choices to tell a completely new tale. There are millions of possible combinations and endless stories to be told! And can you find the cheeky penguin hidden on each page?
How cool is that?!
Over the years, I’ve realized that I thoroughly enjoy the active participation required by both the reader and the author—that a story is the unique experience of what happens only when reader and author journey together.
My newest book, Let’s Make Comics: An Activity Book to Create, Write, and Draw Your Own Cartoons, celebrates the participation between reader and creator in ways that the stories only work when the reader works to complete them.
But wait—there’s more! Let’s Tell a Story!: Fairy Tale Adventure is the same flavor of fun, but with a fairy twist!
If you enjoy the Let’s Tell a Story! books, you might also enjoy An Alphabet of Alphabets, Number of Numbers (both are fully-illustrated Where’s Waldo-style hidden object books), and Illuminightmare (a spooky-fun use of a three-color lens app and mysterious images).
If you’re interesting in learning how to write and draw your own comics, check out my book Let’s Make Comics! An Activity Book to Create, Write, and Draw Your Own Cartoons.
A light-hearted interactive guide to comics and cartoon-making that uses an activity book format and creatively stimulating prompts to teach the fundamentals of cartooning in a fun and easy-to-follow fashion.
From a working cartoonist and comic book making instructor, this all-ages activity book uses humorous and informative one-page comics and exercise prompts to guide young readers (and readers who are young at heart) through easy-to-master lessons on the skills needed to make comics.
The activities cover a range of essential comics-making tasks from creating expressions for characters to filling in blank panels to creating original characters and placing them in adventures of their own. Each exercise can stand on its own or work together with others in the book to stimulate creativity via the comics medium.
In the end, readers who complete the activities inside the book itself will have created several comics of their own, and will have generated many ideas for more sequential art creations.
If you’d like to read my next graphic novel for FREE and before it’s published, sign up for my First Readers Club here.
February 15, 2021
Two-Week Wait: An IVF Story (Book Review)
Two-Week Wait: An IVF Story
Written by Luke Jackson and Kelly Jackson
Illustrated by Mara Wild
Two-Week Wait combines the experiences of the authors and couples around the world as they struggle with infertility and the many pressures, stresses, and disappointments that often accompany the condition. I found myself relating with Conrad and Joanne, as my wife and I and many of our friends and family have experienced very similar circumstances and found the portrayal of Conrad and Joanne honest and compelling.
Though the ending is abrupt and somewhat unresolved in important ways for the reader, the journey is a series of dashed hopes, emotional blows, as well as high-points and optimism, all written and illustrated in a casual, accessible style.
I imagine the book will resonate with many readers as a solace, a balm, and—above all else—a kindred spirit.
Having spent the past 2+ years in bed and 3+ years without a diagnosis for my debilitating pain (despite having visited 48 medical professionals, most of them multiple times), the following page put me in tears for its expression of exhaustion, confusion, and frustration.
Health and medical issues can be incredibly taxing mentally, physically, emotionally, and financially. Though I have an unbeatable team of loving and supportive family and friends, I often feel like a burden to others—reduced to a problem to be solved, rather than a person who wants to live. (I know this isn’t actually the case, but the feeling can be overwhelming and difficult to ignore.)
If you’re interesting in learning how to write and draw your own comics, check out my book Let’s Make Comics! An Activity Book to Create, Write, and Draw Your Own Cartoons.
A light-hearted interactive guide to comics and cartoon-making that uses an activity book format and creatively stimulating prompts to teach the fundamentals of cartooning in a fun and easy-to-follow fashion.
From a working cartoonist and comic book making instructor, this all-ages activity book uses humorous and informative one-page comics and exercise prompts to guide young readers (and readers who are young at heart) through easy-to-master lessons on the skills needed to make comics. The activities cover a range of essential comics-making tasks from creating expressions for characters to filling in blank panels to creating original characters and placing them in adventures of their own. Each exercise can stand on its own or work together with others in the book to stimulate creativity via the comics medium.
In the end, readers who complete the activities inside the book itself will have created several comics of their own, and will have generated many ideas for more sequential art creations.
If you’d like to read my next graphic novel for FREE and before it’s published, sign up for my First Readers Club here.
February 6, 2021
The Collected Toppi, Volume 5 (Book Review)
Wow! Any effort to say something meaningful or insightful about this book (and the collective body of work Sergio Toppi gifted the world) will be dwarfed by the sheer scope and brilliance of the stories themselves. That being said…
The Collected Toppi Volume 5 is yet another staggering, magnificent collection of stories masterfully expressed through thoughtful words and expert draftsmanship—this time with a focus on war folk tales that take place in Eastern Europe and Siberia. Each panel, page, and story is remarkable in its composition, characterization, humanity, draftsmanship, pacing, tone, and design.
As with the stories in previous collections of Toppi’s works, these tales are a resplendent blend of magic, horror, trickery, discovery, and pride.
In his foreword to this volume, Jason Shawn Alexander writes:
“As artists, it’s easy to consider our line as our voice…our language. Sergio Toppi had a much more expansive vocabulary than most. And you can see it in every page.”
-Jason Shawn Alexander
If you’re interesting in learning how to write and draw your own comics, check out my book Let’s Make Comics! An Activity Book to Create, Write, and Draw Your Own Cartoons.
A light-hearted interactive guide to comics and cartoon-making that uses an activity book format and creatively stimulating prompts to teach the fundamentals of cartooning in a fun and easy-to-follow fashion.
From a working cartoonist and comic book making instructor, this all-ages activity book uses humorous and informative one-page comics and exercise prompts to guide young readers (and readers who are young at heart) through easy-to-master lessons on the skills needed to make comics.
The activities cover a range of essential comics-making tasks from creating expressions for characters to filling in blank panels to creating original characters and placing them in adventures of their own. Each exercise can stand on its own or work together with others in the book to stimulate creativity via the comics medium.
In the end, readers who complete the activities inside the book itself will have created several comics of their own, and will have generated many ideas for more sequential art creations.
If you’d like to read my next graphic novel for FREE and before it’s published, sign up for my First Readers Club here.
White All Around (Book Review)
White All Around
Written by Wilfrid Lupano Illustrated by Stephane Fert
136 pages, Europe Comics
Historical Fiction / Graphic Novels / Historical & Biographical Fiction Graphic Novels
A harrowing and deeply affecting recounting of a series of events and issues revolving around the Prudence Crandall School’s announcement to accept “black students” thirty years before the abolition of slavery in the U.S.
Told through pointed dialogue and lavish illustrations, White All Around explores a nexus of historic racial injustices and prejudices, as well as tensions between genders, classes, religion, beliefs, ages, and teacher/student relationships.
I especially appreciate the factual historic information at the end of the book, including condensed biographies of Sarah Harris (the first official African American student of Crandall’s Canterbury Female Boarding School), Mary Harris (Sarah Harris’s sister and teacher-turned-principal), Canterbury student Mary Elizabeth Miles, and others involved in the school and the issues surrounding its significance.
From the publisher (Europe Comics):
Canterbury, Connecticut, 1832: a charming female boarding school has found success among the locals, with two dozen girls enrolled. Some in town question the purpose of educating young girls—but surely there’s no harm in trying? At least not until the Prudence Crandall School announces its plans to start accepting black students. Thirty years before the abolition of slavery in the United States, in the so-called “free” North, these students will be met by a wave of hostility that puts the future of the school in question, and their very lives in peril. Even in the land of the free, not all of America’s children are welcome.
If you’re interested in White All Around, then you might like Nathan Hales’ The Underground Abductor—a brilliant and chilling depiction of Harriet Tubman, “one of the most daring leaders of the Underground Railroad”.
If you’re interesting in learning how to write and draw your own comics, check out my book Let’s Make Comics! An Activity Book to Create, Write, and Draw Your Own Cartoons.
A light-hearted interactive guide to comics and cartoon-making that uses an activity book format and creatively stimulating prompts to teach the fundamentals of cartooning in a fun and easy-to-follow fashion.
From a working cartoonist and comic book making instructor, this all-ages activity book uses humorous and informative one-page comics and exercise prompts to guide young readers (and readers who are young at heart) through easy-to-master lessons on the skills needed to make comics. The activities cover a range of essential comics-making tasks from creating expressions for characters to filling in blank panels to creating original characters and placing them in adventures of their own. Each exercise can stand on its own or work together with others in the book to stimulate creativity via the comics medium. In the end, readers who complete the activities inside the book itself will have created several comics of their own, and will have generated many ideas for more sequential art creations.
If you’d like to read my next graphic novel for FREE and before it’s published, sign up for my First Readers Club here.
February 5, 2021
Honeycomb by Joanne M. Harris (Book Review)
Honeycomb by Joanne M. Harris with illustrations by Charles Vess
432 pages
Dark Fantasy / Mythology / Folk Tales / Fantasy / Adventure
Aesop’s Fables meets the Brothers Grimm in this brilliant, glittering, gushing collection of fantastic fairy tales and folklore, written in thoughtful prose and masterfully illustrated by living legend Charles Vess.
From the publisher (Gallery / Saga Press):
A lushly illustrated set of dark, captivating fairy tales from the bestselling author of The Gospel of Loki with illustrator Charles Vess (Stardust).
The beauty of stories; you never know where they will take you. Full of dreams and nightmares, Honeycomb is an entrancing mosaic novel of original fairy tales from bestselling author Joanne M. Harris and legendary artist Charles Vess in a collaboration that’s been years in the making. The toymaker who wants to create the perfect wife; the princess whose heart is won by words, not actions; the tiny dog whose confidence far outweighs his size; and the sinister Lacewing King who rules over the Silken Folk. These are just a few of the weird and wonderful creatures who populate Joanne Harris’s first collection of fairy tales.
Dark, gripping, and brilliantly imaginative, these magical tales will soon have you in their thrall in a uniquely illustrative edition.
The tales are beautifully illustrated by renowned illustrator Charles Vess (Stardust, Sandman, The Books of Earthsea).
Creatures 1: The City That Never Sleeps (Graphic Novel Review)
Published by Europe Comics
72 pages
Sci-fi / Action & Adventure / Fantasy / Esoteric
Wow! What a fantastic weave of characters living in a post-apocalyptic New York City, struggling to survive a gritty, changing landscape of horrific zombies and a strange green fog.
Action-packed with frightening, nightmarish creatures and jump-scare scenarios. The perfect setup for a frenetic new series.
From the publisher:
In a post-apocalyptic New York City obliterated by a Big Night that wiped out most of civilization, bands of children struggle to stay alive in the wreckage, hunting for food under billowing clouds of toxic fog and running from hungry zombies. One child is endowed with the power to keep them at bay, but will it be enough to protect the survivors from the terrifying creature that has just risen out of the Hudson River? Meanwhile, a raving old man with a house full of books says the worst is yet to come…
My New Favorite Picture Book
The Thingity-Jig is my new favorite book! It is a joyful, readful, inventive thing that bounces and sways and turns reading to play. Perfectly-paced with tasty prose and warmed with wonderful, whimsical scenes. An absolute delight to read and a marvelous feast for the eyes—get ready for The Thingity-Jig to enter heavy rotation for reading time.
From the publisher (Peachtree Publishing):
The Thingity-Jigby Kathleen Doherty
illustrated by Kristyna Litten
This jovial frolic through the city and woods celebrates ingenuity and teems with whimsical wordplay—a delightful read for any STEAM storytime.
Under the light of a silvery moon, Bear wanders into people town and discovers a springy thing, a bouncy thing—a sit-on-it, jump-on-it thing! This Thingity-Jig is too heavy to carry home by himself, so Bear runs back to the woods and asks for help. Too bad for Bear, his friends are sleepy and shoo him away. So Bear invents a Rolly-Rumpity to wheel the Thingity-Jig home, but then it all gets stuck in the mud! How will Bear tackle this bump in the road? With a Lifty-Uppity, of course!
Reading specialist and former educator Kathy Doherty perfectly blends inventive upcycling and STEAM elements with a delightful story in this wonderfully charismatic picture book. Illustrator Kristyna Litten brings the world to life with incredible settings and empathetic characters.
February 4, 2021
Parenthesis by Elodie Durand (Book Review)
Winner of the Revelation Prize, Liberation Readers’ Prize, and Poland Prize from the Angoulême International Comics Festival and named one of FNAC’s “Top 10 Graphic Novels About Illness”!
From the publisher (Top Shelf):
A triumph of graphic memoir, Parenthesis narrates the author’s experience with tumor-related epilepsy–losing herself, and finding herself again.
Judith is barely out of her teens when a tumor begins pressing on her brain, ushering in a new world of seizures, memory gaps, and loss of self. Suddenly, the sentence of her normal life has been interrupted by the opening of a parenthesis that may never close.
Based on the real experiences of cartoonist Élodie Durand, Parenthesis is a gripping testament of struggle, fragility, acceptance, and transformation which was deservedly awarded the Revelation Prize of the Angoulême International Comics Festival. — a 224-page, B&W graphic novel with French flaps (6″ x 9″).
My Review
Parenthesis is a powerful, intimate glimpse into the creator’s experience with illness and recovery and the effects of such on the lives of her friends and family. The writing is direct and easy to follow and the artwork does a fantastic job in demonstrating Durand’s mental and emotional states as she navigates the confusion and exhaustion that accompany her illness.
In reading Parenthesis, I couldn’t help thinking of David B’s stunning graphic memoir Epileptic, which recounts growing up with his brother, Jean-Christophe, who suffered from epileptic seizures and the many medicines, diets, treatments, and other cares explored by his parents and attending physicians. Definitely worth checking out if you enjoyed Parenthesis, graphic memoirs, or the graphic potentials inherent in the comics form.
For tips on making your own graphic novel, check out my 7-part series on How To Make a Graphic Novel.
