Artist Liz Climo has created a charmingly quirky animal kingdom, a place where grizzly bears, porcupines, rabbits, and anteaters all grapple with everyday life with wit and humor. Through her comics, we make unexpected yet wise discoveries: how armadillos make fast-and-easy Halloween costumes, how dinosaurs deal with their inquisitive children, or the ingenious ways that animal friends can work together to ensure their juice is always freshly squeezed.
Liz Climo grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area and moved to Los Angeles after college to work as a character artist on The Simpsons. She started a comic blog, LizClimo.tumblr.com, where Rory and his dad first appeared in 2012. Liz currently lives in Los Angeles with her husband, Colin, and their daughter, Marlow.
Liz Climo is a character artist for The Simpsons TV series and has worked on The Lebrons and Seth Macfarlane's Cavalcade of Cartoon Comedy. She also the author of Le Petit Monde de Liz, a comic collection published in France as well as a forthcoming children’s book. She lives in Los Angeles.
after discovering and loving Lobster Is the Best Medicine: A Collection of Comics About Friendship recently, i knew i needed to get my hands on more of her stuff. i'm not someone who is good at internetting, so while the rest of you have been long enjoying her work on the facebook and the tumblr, i'm late to the game here and it's ALL NEW to me!
you computer folks have probably already seen most of these (and many more) cartoons on her various sites, but this old-fashioned paper-book girl got these endpapers:
so there.
i took a bunch of pictures of my favorites from the book, but they didn't come out so hot, so i'm just going to internet-grab them, because that is one computer skill i do have.
like so:
and so:
in the cute-art tradition, you have your fullblown kawaii which is sweet enough to rot your teeth:
you have people like roman dirge who juxtapose the adorable with the horrifying: and then you have liz climo, who is generally sweet and fun for the whole family, but will occasionally skew if not dark, at least a little dim:
but for the most part her strength is creating in these perfect, succinct interactions between creatures that are unexpected and silly in a way that makes you want to hug something.
and my favorite:
it's simple, cute stuff, but it just makes me grin.
i dare you to look at this and not crack a smile, you monster:
i leave you with this life lesson:
and some obligatory foxen for greg:
more books for me, please!
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sharks for now, review to come but i'm officially a fan.
Awww, it was adorable. This is a heartwarming, one sitting book, and really easy to get through. The cartoons are so cute. Not every joke made me smile, but it's still a great comic. I recommend to anyone, who wants some sweet minutes in your life.
This is me holding my copy: End paper on point: Let's start with sloths and koalas because they're my faves... I also started to like snakes more after these books. THE CUTENESS. I CAN'T. Finally someone said it:
Cute is the dominant word in most of the reviews of this book and it is the first word that came to my mind when I was reading it. But that might be too dismissive of it. Maybe it is that I have been reading a lot of bleak work lately (John Porcellino's The Hospital Suite, about his struggles with mental and physical health, R. Crumb, Harvey Pekar, …) but this book was a breath of fresh air and just delightful. I am not dismissing the importance of bleakness in literature; it serves an important purpose. If Pollyanna or Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm were all we had to read, we would be naive, saccharine, escapist. This is the month of Michael Brown, Mr. Garner in NYC, of Bill Cosby, of mean-spirited reactions to Obama's acts on behalf of the families of immigrants, after all. But naive and saccharine: that's not how I feel about Liz Climo's little world.
This is an all ages book, a book of animal comics and cartoons, drawn very cleanly, though not fussily, with insights into we humans, in a sense ala Gary Larson and his animal/science cartoons that help us understand both animals and humans. Climo makes you believe in goodness, sweetness. I am thinking of all the snark that accompanied the recent, live production of Peter Pan, which was often so vicious, and so much of the nastiness that accompanies almost anything "nice" that we encounter on the web, and imagining that some of that might come to Climo, too. Maybe she's already heard the haters, since these were web comix first, many of them. I hope not, though. This stuff is good, and serves an important purpose. These comics are sweet and made me smile, so there! If you need a lift like I did, read it!
So flippin' adorable I just can't even. The art alone would be worth buying the book for, but the writing is wonderful, too.
We get lessons on friendship:
Otter, to shark: Let's go collect seashells!
Shark: Okay, but if we run into any of my friends, pretend like I was just about to eat you.
Otter: Yeah, no problem.
Glimpses of what parenthood is like:
Baby dinosaur: Want me to tell you a ghost story? So, um, there's this ghost, and his name is Steve. No, wait, it's Mr. Vampire. And he was gonna go to school, but he had a tummy ache, so he went home. Then there was this other ghost, his name was Superman. No, wait, it was...
Dad dinosaur: Why don't I tell you a ghost story instead.
Baby: Okay.
And a look at a busy but happy marriage:
Note from anteater to anteater spouse:I'll be home late. Dinner is on the table. xo
(Anteater glances over at table to see: an ant farm.)
All of the comics are cute, some are "aw"-inducingly adorable, a few are laugh-out-loud funny. I'm making a new shelf in honor of Little World: "good gift idea." This is a book that would make pretty much anyone happy -- except maybe your great-grandmother, who might scowl at you because you gave her a book where the last cartoon shows Charlotte the spider calling Wilbur a bad word. ("When I was a little girl, Charlotte wrote nice things in her web, like 'Some pig'! E.B. White must be spinning in his grave!" "Sorry, Gram. Um, the rest of the book's cute, right?" "Hmmph.")
Mình sẽ cho 5 sao nếu quyển đang đọc là bản tiếng Anh. Và theo mình thì bản dịch này đã phá hủy đi một phần sức hút của quyển sách.
Các câu chuyện của Liz Climo đều hết sức đơn giản, chỉ tóm gọn trong 1 trang với 1 hoặc 2 khung hình, đa phần đều là những hình lặp lại, chỉ khác về câu thoại. Và điều làm nên tính hài hước, duyên dáng cho những câu chuyện này chính là các câu thoại đó. Nếu hay đọc các rage comic của Mỹ trên mạng, có khi chỉ là những hình minh họa nguệch ngoạc đơn giản kèm theo những dòng thoại tình huống hài hước, thì bạn có thể hình dung quyển sách này là tập hợp những bức ảnh vui nhộn như vậy. Chỉ khác ở chỗ đây là những câu chuyện hết sức ngây ngô đáng yêu và nét vẽ cũng đáng yêu như thế.
Những lời thoại thường mang tính tối giản và nhiều ẩn ý theo kiểu "lời ít ý nhiều". Nhưng người dịch lại bỏ công biến chúng thành kiểu nói mang nhiều "cảm xúc" quen thuộc với người Việt Nam, bằng cách thêm vào những "nhé, nhờ, nhỉ, ù ôi" làm cho câu văn quá rõ ràng, sáng sủa, mất đi hiệu ứng gây cười (tủm tỉm) như trong bản gốc.
Cũng góp công vào "sự nghiệp" này là việc "quan hệ hoá" các nhân vật trong sách, mình đã đọc vài trang trong bản gốc chỉ toàn xưng hô I - you thôi nên lúc đó cũng không để ý đến vấn đề này. Còn dịch giả lại bỏ công nghiên cứu (chắc từ lời tâm sự của tác giả, rằng nhân vật này lấy hình tượng từ bản thân mình, nhân vật kia thì từ chồng, từ bố...) nên đối thoại giữa các con vật hết sức tình cảm, nào anh nào em, nào chúng mình, làm mình đọc mà không có cảm giác thú vị như khi đọc bản gốc (mà đọc đến gần hết sách rồi mình vẫn còn thấy lạ khi con thỏ nhỏ nhắn đóng vai "anh", còn bé gấu to lớn lại xưng "em", nếu để cậu - tớ còn hay hơn nhiều ấy).
Vậy nên nếu bạn muốn sở hữu một cuốn sách đáng yêu như thế này trong tủ sách của mình với một cái giá cũng đáng yêu không kém (kim đồng làm sách rẻ thật đấy) thì hãy mua bản tiếng Việt này. Nhưng nếu muốn hòa vào thế giới nhỏ nhưng tràn ngập sắc màu trẻ thơ của Liz Climo thì nên tìm đọc phiên bản gốc :).
I had seen the work of Liz Climo on tumblr - sadly with no attribution, which makes me so mad, artists deserve recognition for their works!
So I was familiar with her work, and I loved every single comic I'd seen of hers: her comics are so sweet, and cute, and funny! This book was no exception, it was SUPER CUTE, and just absolutely delightful! There were some comics I had seen before, but there were also quite a few surprises in there, this was one of my favourites:
I know she has published more books and I hope I'll get to read them all! Highly recommended for children and adults alike!
I was super thrilled to get this as a Christmas prezzie this year 🎁 I have followed the artist for the past year or so and her comics never fail to put a smile on my face.
They are so simple in their layout, no extra fluff. Just the straight forward snap shots of life and finding the humor in everything, no matter how small.
I adore each and every character, and I savor every comic I read. Whenever I need a pick me up after a rough day, or my mental health is in the toilet, these comics are my go-to 🥰 It’s an instant laugh to burn away the depression when you need it most.
And can’t say how happy I am to own even a fraction of these amazing comics in this little book. Seriously check it out and go follow Liz Climo! You won’t regret it 🤗
I guess Liz Climo is among many other cartoonists, not many of them known well or even well received or worse created works to be deserved to be well received, changing our perspective on cartoons and comics gradually with this Instagram-ish quality in their works, being available to be shown in a square and read on a cell phone screen easily. As far as I am concerned it is not a threat, cause our way of representation has been changing ever since the first art work, but the simplicity the style shows might be deluding for those with little expertise and with Instagram which is not controlled by any agent or any publishing houses' rules it might end up in pile of garbage really changing the perspective for worse. Till then, which I highly doubt will come soon, we can lie back and chill out reading and enjoying works such as this a great lot!
This was so incredibly wholesome it actually made me have faith in a better world. Oh, not this one, of course.
The humor was amazing and lighthearted, short stories were awesome in their simplicity and frankly? I would read this over and over again, just to purify myself from YA MCs who think breathing is a personality trait.
Being honest, I connected with wild animals more so than I do with people. Haha, I don't if that's sad or not.
Either way, this mini book made me feel happy and all fuzzy (no allergies in sight) and I would completely recommend just for the fun of it.
And the lovely characters. I loved all of them.
Till now (five minutes after finishing it) I'm still jokering (grinning like the joker, I'm sorry small children. You didn't deserve to see that) and cackling like a maniac, though that isn't actually a surprise and I shall share some beautifully hilarious illustrations that made me fall in love all that more deeply. also, to gently nudge you to laugh with me
I felt partway attacked because I'm pretty sure that's what my parents thought when I was born. Either that reaction or a nurse being, Wut iz that. I have to hope it's the latter.
This is so relatable it is concerning.
What? Who, me? Oh, I'm over here laughing excessively in something that was only a line long. I'm either really easy to make laugh or it was actually funny.
I re-saw some images and I'm wheezing. Send an wheezaulance, help-
Also, heads up, there are a few swear words so maybe don't read it along with children. Lots of weird questions will arise. *snickering*
P.S: I'm still flushing with laughter, there's something wrong here.
Liz Climo (who is also a character artist/storyboard revisionist on The Simpsons) has written the perfect comic series for the Internet age: short, clever, and full of animals.
Here are just a few of my favorites to give you a taste but you really should check outher work.
This was a cute little humorous book that I picked up on Scribd. This is a collection of funny and uplifting cartoons drawn by Liz Climo and it is the perfect pick-me-up read. I would love to own a physical copy to flick through when I need cheering up. Climo's animal characters are adorable and the only fault I can give this is that it is a little short and some of the cartoons weren't as funny as others but I still enjoyed this and would recommend it.
I'd seen these comics pop up here and there, but it's a lot easier to read the collection in a book than random clicking around the internet.
They're organized by topic too (e.g. "Holidays"), so that makes it easier to find particularly fitting comics for special occasions. This gets passed around my family every Christmas:
Love, Love Love this book! I especially liked the cartoon on page 157, which references my favorite Children's book, "Charlotte's Web." I laughed out loud (at work), and totally embarrassed myself. Some of the cartoons in this book are suitable for children, but not that one. It's going to live in my office so I can pick it up at random for a quick shot of humor.
LOVE! Everyone will enjoy this book. The illustrations are anthropomorphic perfection. The writing is simple, witty, and sometimes poignant. I laughed so hard. There is not one dud in the bunch. Great as a gift, a coffee table book, or to read aloud with your kids.
Tämän kirjan selailu on kohtalaisen varma keino saada hymy huulille sellaisenakin päivänä, kun maailma tuntuu potkivan päähän kaikista mahdollisista suunnista. (Kokeiltu on, useammin kuin kerran!) Ehkä kaikkien aikojen rakastettavin sarjakuva-albumi. <3 <3 <3
When I sit down to read a humor comic I really hope that I'll relate to it, or worse want to steal from it to draw my own comic. the little world of liz climo does all that and more. Liz Climo is funny, but it's more than funny. It's like I'm one of her little critters in her comics. I could totally see me in these comics. It makes me want to read more and more. I wish I could be the awkward bear, because everything I do is awkward to me. These comics might feel like short jokes, but they speak volumes of who we are. That is something most books can't do.
The art is simple and beautiful. Liz Climo style is perfect. It's not overbearing or to simple. You've got enough to imagine a world where these critters live. i can't wait to read more by her. She might be my new favorite cartoonist.
Everyone needs to read this book, no everyone needs to own this book and have it sitting on their coffee table. It's that amazing.
The Little World of Liz Climo was a delightful collection of over 100 Liz Climo comics.
Featuring topics from love and friendship to family to daily life, The Little World of Liz Climo has a little something of everything. Throughout the comics we follow a group of animals from grizzly bears to rabbits and even dinosaurs. Full of puns and funny situations, this collection covers it all.
I have seen Liz Climo comics online quite a bit over the years and I have always enjoyed them. The illustrations are so cute and I love all of the different animals. Some of the comics are very funny and I liked how many different topics were covered. There were a few topics that were covered multiple times but overall the variety was good. This collection would make a great gift for just about anyone.
Overall The Little World of Liz Climo was a fun read and I definitely need to pick up more of these collections in the future.