The New Yorker Editor Who Became a Comic Book Hero

The amazing tale of a determined art director who harnessed the powers of the greatest
illustrators around the world to blow kids' minds
Comic books? Educational? The very idea is comical to anyone familiar with the 1954 Senate
subcommittee investigation that linked juvenile delinquency to horror and crime comics. The
politicians dealt the industry a staggering blow that it overcame only after superheroes, plus corny
teens like Archie and a rascal named Dennis, came to the rescue. Still, comics are seldom associated
with literacy. But Franoise Mouly started Toon Books precisely to get more young people reading,
and thinking, and enjoying the printed word, lushly illustrated and handsomely bound as well. Its
something they will hold in their hand and they will feel the care we put into it, Mouly says.
Schools are catching on, spicing up reading lists with Toon titles (43 published so far). Mouly
acknowledges shes putting teachers in a bind that is sort of funny: Can you imagine having to go
see your principal and say, Im going to spend money on comic books! The Editors
Smithsonian correspondent Jeff MacGregor recently sat down with Franoise Mouly in her Toon
Books offices. (This interview has been edited and condensed.)
How did you come up with the idea for Toon Bookscomic panelsas a mechanism for teaching
reading?
When I became a mother and was spending lots of time reading marvelous, wonderful books with
our kids, I reached a point where I realized there are not [all of the] books I would want to have as a
parent. We had spent the time reading childrens books [and French] comics. I would come back
from France with suitcases of the books my kids wanted. They loved comics, partly because it gave
them some things they could decipher for themselves before they could read the words.
And it had been my impulse [to read comics] when I was first in New York and my English was
very poor and I had difficulty reading real books and reading the newspapers. I had a command of
English, but not the way its used colloquially. Comics, because they are a multimedia form of
communicationyou get some of the meaning from the words, from the size of the lettering, from
the font, from the shape of the balloon, you get the emotion of the characterits almost like
sketching out language for you. Kids dont just sit there and wait for knowledge to be shoved into
their brains. Reading is making meaning out of squiggles, but the thing with comics is that no one
has ever had to teach a child how to find Waldo.
I realized this was a fantastic tool. It worked with our kids. Well I learned to read, says Art
[Spiegelman, Mouly's husband and illustrator of Maus], by looking at Batman. But when I
looked, I saw that the educational system was prejudiced against comics. I went to see every
publishing house and it was a kind of circular argument. It was like, Well, its a great idea, but it
goes against a number of things that we dont do.
Was there ever a moment when you were seriously considering giving up?
Oh I gave up! By the end of 2006, beginning of 2007, I had given up. Thats when everybody that I
had talked into it was like, Dont give up! Please dont give up! Keep at it! Thats when I
investigated: What if I do it myself? Im much more nimble because I have very little staff. At some
point I talked to Random House again when I was doing it myself. Yeah, we can do it, well do
them in pamphlets, youll do three a month, so youll do 36 a year of each title and you should do
like five titles. I was like, No, sorry! I cant! Thats not the same attention. You cant produce
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good work.
Whats the best part of being a publisher?
I can make books happen without having to explain and justify. The other thing is that if I had been
picked up by one of those big houses, that would have been the end of me. I would have been wiped
out because I launched in 2008, just when the economy collapsed. So guess what would have been
the first thing to go.
Are the books accomplishing what you set out to do?
Yeah, the feedback we have gotten from the teachers, how well it works. I was talking to someone,
she loves books, her kid loves books, but her granddaughter who is 8 years old basically was like,
Eh, thats not my thing. I sent her a set of Toon Books because she was always advocating for
reading and it was just breaking her heart. The granddaughter took [the books], locked herself in a
room, and then after that was like, Grandma, let me read this aloud to you. She was reading in the
car, taking a book everywhere, taking it to the restaurant. She wanted to read to them all.
Do you think its more useful to have these in school or to have them in the home?
You cannot, in this day and age, get them in the home. Everybody [used to] read newspapers,
everybody read magazines, everybody read books. There were books in the home. Not media for
the elite, [but] mass media. Books and magazines were as prevalent then as Facebook is, as Twitter
is. Thats not the case anymore. Most kids at the age of 5 or 6 dont see their parents picking up a
newspaper or a magazine or a pulp novel or literary novel. So you know, [it becomes] You must
learn to read. Its completely abstract.
The libraries are playing an essential role. The librarians and the teachers were the ones removing
comics from the hands of kids back in the 60s and 70s. Now its actually almost the other way
around. Most kids discover books and comics, if they havent had them for the first five years of
their lives, when they enter school. Because when they enter school, they are taken to the library.
And librarians, once they open the floodgates, they realize, Oh my God, the kids are actually
asking to go to the library because they can sit on the floor and read comics. You dont have to
force them its their favorite time. So then what we try to do, when we do programs with
schools, is try to do it in such a way that a kid can bring a book home because you want them to
teach their parents.
Is there an electronic future for these?
One of my colleagues was saying e-books replaced cheap paperbacks and maybe thats good. A lot
of this disposable print can be replaced by stuff you didnt want to keep. But when I read a book, I
still want to have a copy of the book. I want it to actually not be pristine anymore, I want to see the
stains from the coffee not that Im trying to damage my book, but I want it to have lived with me
for that period of time. And similarly, I think that the kids need to have the book. Its something
they will hold in their hand, and they will feel the care we put into it. The moment I was so happy
was when a little girl was holding one of the Toon Books, and she was petting it and closing her
eyes and going, I love this book, I love this book. The sensuality of her appreciation for the book,
I mean, thats love.
I picture you as a little girl in Paris, your head is in a book. And youre sending this out [now],
youre sending these out to her.
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Its true. Books were my lifeline. Im not worried about my friends children. I know that they have
loving parents that will take them on their lap and read to them and theyll come out OK. But I
believe that we have a responsibility to every other kid whose parent is working two jobs and
doesnt necessarily have time to take their kid on their lap who doesnt have already access to
books. Those kids are thrown into an educational system where the poor teachers dont have a
chance to take the kids individually and do reading time. What is gong to be their lifeline?
With all our books, we do lesson plans of the ways to not just read the book, but reread the book.
Thats what I remember from when I was a kid. [I had] an illustrated fairy tale and I remember
spending hours not just reading the stories again and again, but also looking at the pictures and
seeing how they were different and they echoed and didnt echo each other. Kids naturally want you
to read them the same book every single night to the point where youre going crazy. But they get
something different every time. Thats fundamental, and theres a way in which those books
become building blocks and those have to be good. Those cant be derived products where you do
15 a month. Those have to have as much substance as we had when we read Alice in Wonderland.
The ambition is not to make something that will want to be read, but to make something that can be
reread.
Whats next? What do you do after all this?
Ill find that as I am doing it. When we launched the Toon Graphics, I didnt realize that we would
do books for 8- to 12-year-olds and there would be a book of fantasy and there would be a fairy tale
and there would be Greek mythology. Now Im looking back on it and saying, Oh my God, were
hitting all of the stories that we all need to have and share. Im still figuring it out one book at a
time.
Are you a transformative figure in the history of comics? You became the vehicle that moved
comics out of the fringe into the center.
I cant be the person saying that. All I know is, I know to trust [myself], and that has served me
well. If I see something, how something could be, I should go out and do it. I shouldnt ask
permission from anybody. The thing to stay away from, for me, is what unfortunately is too often
the case in publishing, that they all want to publish last years book. I want to publish next years
book! The book of the future.
Your love story with Art is one of the great love stories.
One of the things that is really meaningful to me is the fact that Ive been able to literally marry my
love for Art, my love for what he loves, everything I learned as a mother. Most people are asked to
separate their private lives from their work lives. I am so privileged that my work life is what I love
and I love what I do in my work.

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