R Huber

Classic Comics 3. The Beast Is Dead!

Raymond — Sun, 13 May 2012 10:37:20 +0000

Comics were banned in occupied France but Edmond-François Calvo secretly produced a powerful satirical comic that became a French icon after the Germans scuttled in 1944. It’s the story of the bloody European war but told with Disney-style animal characters: the French as rabbits; British bulldogs; and German wolves (Goebbels a weasel, Himmler a skunk). La Bete Est Morte! was a forerunner of the graphic novel, Maus, with its Nazi cats and Jewish mice. Here’s an extract:
My dear little children, never forget this: these Wolves who perpetrated these horrors were ordinary Wolves … They were not in the heat of battle excited by the smell of powder. They were not tormented by hunger. They did not have to defend themselves, nor to take vengeance for a victim of their own. They had simply received the order to kill.

Maurice Sendak – Outside Over There

Raymond — Wed, 09 May 2012 06:27:25 +0000

That touch of reality in a child’s life is a child’s comfort. The child gets the sense that this person who wrote this book knows about me and knows the world can be a troubling, incomprehensible place. Maurice Sendak

One of the world’s most treasured children’s book creators, Maurice Sendak, has died, aged 83 years. For me, his picture book Outside Over There is the essence of Sendak – haunting, comforting, uncompromising – nobody else combined the real and the unreal so brilliantly. In a rare interview, Maurice Sendak talked about how his stories reflect ‘childhood as a very passionate, upsetting, silly, comic business’. Outside Over There is a tale of separation and siblings that features a creepy ice baby (pictured). Sendak’s books can also be exuberant (In the Night Kitchen) and even spiritual (Dear Mili). On teaching writing Sendak said:

I stress character, character, character. And for authors to go where you want; go where you will. Children will go everywhere.

Classic Comics 2: Max and Moritz

Raymond — Thu, 03 May 2012 00:03:52 +0000

Max and Moritz (1865) by William Busch is one of the first ever comic books. The boys create mayhem with violent booby-traps that torment animals and authority figures; but they are finally, justly, eaten by ducks. The exaggerated wickness follows the style of Shock-headed Peter (1845).

Through the chimney now, with pleasure

They behold the tempting treasure.

Busch was the first comic artist to use motion lines to show rapid movements, such as his eye-popping piano virtuoso playing furioso:

Classic Comics 1: Quadratino

Raymond — Sat, 28 Apr 2012 01:29:38 +0000

Quadratino (1911) or ‘Square Head’, is an Italian comic strip by Antonio Rubino. In each story, Quadratino’s mischief is punished by an ‘accident’ in which his head is squeezed into a new geometric shape – he rolls downstairs and it becomes a circle; a biscuit tin squashes it into a rectangle – and Mother Geometry must ‘redraw’ his square. Maths has never been such fun! According to the essential guide 1001 Comics You Must Read Before You Die Quadratino is “the best conceptual homage to comics” (he’s a living comic strip frame). I love his cat too:

War is old

Raymond — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 00:45:05 +0000

Alice Walker’s picture book Why War Is Never a Good Idea begins with the bright, comforting colours of a book for young children, but as War devastates the land the images become grim. It’s a scary message and parents will judge when their children are ready for it. The illustrations by Stefano Vitale are evocative and Walker’s words are true:

Though War is old

It has not become wise.

Though War has a mind of its own

War never knows who it is going to hit.

Walker comments: ‘War attacks not just people, “the other,” or “enemy,” it attacks Life itself: everything that humans and other species hold sacred and dear … It doesn’t matter what the politics are, because though politics might divide us, the air and the water do not … Our only hope of maintaining a livable planet lies in teaching our children to honor nonviolence, especially when it comes to caring for Nature, which keeps us going with such grace and faithfulness.’

The Bull and the Dictators

Raymond — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 06:40:05 +0000

The classic Ferdinand by Munro Leaf (1936) remains one of the most influential children’s books (it’s never gone out of print) because of its simple but powerful theme. The tale of a bull who likes to smell flowers instead of fighting was seen as a pacifist text at the time of the Spanish Civil War. Ferdinand is an outsider; a free-thinker who bravely chooses to do what he loves instead of following the crowd.

No wonder the book was

banned by Franco
burned by Hitler
used by Stalin to name a gun
a favourite of Gandhi
made into an Oscar-winning movie by Disney

In contrast, Munro Leaf also wrote books which reflected the strict child-raising style of the time. His 3 and 30 Watchbirds (1941) condemns behaviours such as shoe-scuffing, primping, mumbling, moaning, fidgeting, sassing and wasting food. Some of it is in the spirit of war-time frugality but some Watchbirds are a bit extreme:

Grammar Can Be Fun is slightly more tongue-in-cheek and warns children against slack language such as “gimme, wanna, gonna, and ain’t”.

Best Books For Babies

Raymond — Sat, 14 Apr 2012 21:52:15 +0000

I’m to become a grandfather this year (!) and I can’t wait to provide lots of lovely books. The best picture books are a marriage of text and illustration: they should both support and spark off each other. The plot should be focused for very young children and the pictures oddly comforting. I Went Walking by Sue Williams is a perfect first book. The words are extremely basic yet they incorporate repetition, questions, rhymes and humour. And the illustrations by Julie Vivas are sublime; leading the eye across the page in a dance of line, shape and colour. (See her gorgeous version of the Nativity too).

Max’s Bath by Barbro Lindgren is another delightful book for preschoolers. Max dumps his toys and his food in the tub and then tries to bath the dog with predictable results. Max is a classic ‘terrible two year old’ combining the utmost charm and mischief.

The picture book Seasons by French artist Blexbolex is a unique, meditative book for young children that adults will relish for it’s design. It’s a tactile treat, printed in chunky hardback on rough paper, like the old comic annuals. Each page has a single word and a subtle image to illustrate it. No garish colours here, just the quiet passing of seasons.

Bees can tell the time

Raymond — Mon, 09 Apr 2012 04:49:45 +0000

Honey bees have a body clock to keep track of time – this is vital because flowers produce nectar at different hours of the day – dandelions at 9am, for example. We have a similar inner clock but most of us rely on outer clocks to tell the time. If our devices were removed we’d probably learn to use our body clock too. Bees learn very quickly. Scientists trained some bees to feed (on sugar water) at 10.30am, and after that the bees turned up at exactly that time to be fed.

A Drone’s Life

Raymond — Wed, 04 Apr 2012 00:55:21 +0000

It’s autumn for the honey bees and soon the drones will be pushed out of the beehive to die. Male bees have a high life in summer: eating and sleeping – the females even clean up their droppings – but then they’re executed. Why have drones? To mate with a new queen. Several drones will mate with her and die gruesomely in the act. Drones themselves have no father; they hatch from unfertilised eggs. It was once thought all bees came from virgin queen births, until in 1788 a blind Swiss naturalist, Francois Huber (I’m not making this up), proved that queens mated – the event is nicely novelized in The Beekeeper’s Pupil by Sara George.

Photo: what big eyes the drones have, all the better to find the queen.

Creativity, Google and Mad Men

Raymond — Fri, 23 Mar 2012 04:38:25 +0000

The imagination of the good artist or thinker produces continuously good, mediocre, and bad things, but his judgment, trained and sharpened to a fine point, rejects, selects, connects… All great artists and thinkers [are] great workers, indefatigable not only in inventing, but also in rejecting, sifting, transforming, ordering. Nietzsche

Imagine, a new book by Jonah Lehrer – author of Proust was a Neuroscientist – is about creativity and the brain (see video below). Lehrer believes that creativity is our natural state and, like Neitzsche, he stresses the role of synthesising:

The synthesizing mind takes information from disparate sources, understands and evaluates that information objectively, and puts it together in ways that make sense… the capacity to synthesize becomes ever more crucial as information continues to mount at dizzying rates.

Perhaps synthesising is another word for the endless mulling, rewriting and editing that writers go through. David Ogilvy was one of the original 1960s ‘ad men’ referenced in TV’s Mad Men. He described the creative process of writing advertising copy as ‘a slow and laborious business’ of redrafting and editing (read his full letter here).

Does the ‘dizzying’ internet make us more creative? In a fascinating essay about the brain and computers, Jim Holt argues that while the internet sharpens many cognitive skills, it may be the enemy of creativity. The problem is that the web can be distracting (rather than reflective) for the brain and it barely engages with deeper levels of thought. Holt calls Google a ‘memory prosthesis’. That might be true but it does make synthesising a blog a lot of fun.

Talent develops in tranquility. Goethe

More: editing; and writing and computers