The New Yorker Editor Who Became a Comic Book Hero

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This article By Eleanor Davis; Interview by Jeff MacGregor is off of the Smithsonian Magazine website, on November 12, 2015.

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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 Françoise 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. “It’s 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 she’s putting teachers in a bind that is sort of funny: “Can you imagine having to go see your principal and say, ‘I’m going to spend money on comic books!’” – The Editors

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Smithsonian correspondent Jeff MacGregor recently sat down with Françoise Mouly in her Toon Books offices. (This interview has been edited and condensed.)

How did you come up with the idea for Toon Books—comic panels—as 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 children’s 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.

Read the full post on Smithsonian Magazine

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