ReadItDaddy's Second Book of the Week - Week Ending 4th January 2019: "The Graphic Canon of Children's Literature: The Definitive Anthology of Kidlit as Graphics and Visuals" edited by Russ Kick (Seven Stories Press)

Our Second Book of the Week to kick off January with a flying start is a real "OH MY GOSH!" book...
I'm actually mildly surprised I haven't come across "The Graphic Canon of Children's Literature" before - as there have apparently been several volumes of this absolutely incredible book.

Russ Kick, the collection editor, has gathered together an astounding body of work in this collection with new stories and some taken from previous volumes.

It's also something that comes with a "Parental Guidance" mumble from me, a very quiet and small one. You see these are classic fairy tales, fables and contemporary fiction presented in an entirely new form, uncensored and quite raw in some cases, but utterly dazzling and scintillating work from some of the most incredible creatives involved in art, kidlit, webcomics and graphics.

To give you a flavour of some of the stories - and some of the folk involved, here's a picture of the back cover...I mean just look at that lot!

Wow, that is one IMPRESSIVE roll call!

Some stories, such as "The Velveteen Rabbit" and "Pinocchio" you'll already be utterly familiar with, but here they are presented in entirely new ways with dazzling visuals key to each project.

Other stories are more cleverly presented - imagine the "Harry Potter" books devilishly designed as a set of one-shot 'posters' by immensely talented Web Comic guru Lucy Knisley.

Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone reimagined by Lucy Knisley in an exquisite strip-comic.

Or, even more incredibly, all 13 of the L. Frank Baum "Oz" books presented as classic 1930s style comic strips, beautifully drawn and rendered in that old timey-wimey style by Shawn Cheng.

Due to a couple of elements of adult content and nudity I would advise parents to have a good leaf through before they let their kids loose on it (Some of the early Aesop Fable reworkings in this are the ones that spring to mind - again the whole point of this collection is to present the stories as uncensored and un-mucked-about-with as possible).

It's glorious stuff though once you get into the strips. Particular highlights include the ones mentioned above, plus Sid Jacobson and Ernie Colon's utterly brilliant reworking of "The Diary of Anne Frank" (which is presented in an abridged form here, but also now available as a graphic novel in its own right).

Some of the works were specially commissioned for this anthology whereas others appear elsewhere either on the web or in other forms, but if you want a huge hefty big thick 'beat a whale to death with it, it's so big' paperback book full of absolute wonder, this is it.

Absolutely fantastic!

C's favourite story: The fantastic Harry Potter potted strips are just sublime!

Daddy's favourite story: I loved all the L Frank Baum stuff. Some really neat and 'dark' stuff in there.

"The Graphic Canon of Children's Literature" edited by Russ Kick is out now, published by Seven Stories Press (kindly supplied for review).