Nursery Rhyme Comics

Those close to me have already seen one of the few copies I have, but in case you haven't heard, First Second Books has put together a spectacular collection of comics created by 50 cartoonists called Nursery Rhyme Comics. Due to land in book stores on October 11th!

Edited by the one and only Chris Duffy (of Nickelodeon Magazine and most recently, SpongeBob Comics fame), the book features 50 timeless nursery rhymes! That adorable cover art you see above: by Vera Brogsol; book design: by Colleen AF Venable. We owe a great deal of thanks to Calista Brill and Gina Gagliano from First Second, as well.

So, who's in it? Well, I am! In addition to what is a truly astounding line-up of cartoonists:

Nick Abadzis; Andrew Arnold; Kate Beaton; Vera Brosgol; Nick Bruel; Scott Campbell; Lilli Carre; Roz Chast; JP Coovert; Jordan Crane; Rebecca Dart; Eleanor Davis; Vanessa Davis; Theo Ellsworth; Matt Forsythe; Jules Feiffer; Alexis Frederick-Frost; Ben Hatke; Gilbert Hernandez; Jaime Hernandez; Lucy Knisley; David Macaulay; Mark Martin; Patrick McDonnell; Mike Mignola; Tony Millionaire; Tao Nyeu; George O’Connor; Mo Oh; Eric Orchard; Laura Park; Cyril Pedrosa; Lark Pien; Aaron Renier; Dave Roman; Marc Rosenthal; Stan Sakai; Richard Sala; Mark Siegel; James Sturm; Raina Telgemeier; Craig Thompson; Richard Thompson; Sara Varon; Jen Wang; Drew Weing; Gahan Wilson; Gene Luen Yang; and Stephanie Yue—with an introduction by Leonard S. Marcus!

No joke, right?

We were all given a nursery rhyme. I got "Little Boy Blue" —the first panel of which you can see below.

In review, this book should be arriving at your local bookstore any week now. Nursery Rhyme Comics is of course available online (for pre-order, even, right now!). It's the kind of book that will be sure to please the littlest of kids, and the biggest of comics fans. (I know my niece likes it!)

Boston folk: I'm scheduled at some point in October to make an appearance at the Boston Public Library to help promote the book. More to come on that!