Character drawing from a short non-Hereville comic I’m working on

Hereville is knocked out of The Battle Of The Kids Books!

Alas, Hereville has been knocked out of the SLJ Battle of the Kid’s Books! Congratulations to Kathi Appelt’s Keeper, which won the round.

It’s hard for me to feel bad about this, though. For one thing, Keeper sounds like a terrific book (and I intend to read it). For another, Hereville was one of only 16 books published in 2010 — out of the tens of thousands of kids books published in a year — to be selected to participate in the Battle at all.

And finally, the judge for this round, Susan Patron, had this to say about Hereville:

Hereville: How Mirka Got Her Sword, a graphic novel by Barry Deutsch, must be the only book ever whose outside front cover made me laugh. “Yet Another Troll-Fighting 11-Year-Old Orthodox Jewish Girl,” it proclaims. Thick, shiny, paper painted in shades of coral, brown, black and white—changing to deep purples and grays in the scary night scenes—feel silky to the touch. Every page is vibrant with energetic pictures, dialogue, sound effects—and extremely minimal exposition.

The story plays with genres, tilting them on their sides; using incongruity, it skewers conventions. Seemingly we are in the middle of a Hansel and Gretel pastiche, a fairy tale, in which the characters sprinkle their dialogue with Yiddish words, “A klog iz mir: Woe is me!” as well as expressions like “Yaaaah!” ”Mumph!” and “Aaak!” Mirka, one daughter in a large family of sibs and step-sibs, rebels against the traditional role expected of her in the Orthodox Jewish community of Hereville. Rather than learning such “womanly arts” as knitting, she wants to fight dragons. There is lots of very clever stuff here: visual jokes such as an illustration contained within an exclamation point, table legs morphing into trees, and a deliciously horrid troll.

Wit and irony also abound in the text: a monster pig eats Mirka’s homework, Mirka and her clever, loving stepmother engage in wonderfully funny debates, and some Orthodox traditions are gently poked fun at (“preparing for all that non-working [on Shabbos] takes a lot of work!” and “In Hereville, kids aren’t allowed to have non-Jewish books. So Mirka keeps hers hidden”). I was hugely entertained, even as one tender scene brought tears to my eyes.

How can I possibly feel bad about that?

(Info about purchasing Hereville can be found here.)

Hereville makes Booklist’s annual “Best Graphic Novels For Teens” list!

And here’s the list.

Hereville Nominated For Andre Norton Award

I was very surprised, but also very honored, that my graphic novel Hereville has been nominated for the 2010 “Andre Norton Award for Young Adult Science Fiction and Fantasy.”

The Andre Norton award is given out annually by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association of America for an outstanding work of fiction for young people. It’s given out as part of the Nebula Awards. (When the nice lady from the Nebula committee called me, she said this is “essentially the Nebula Award for young adult books”).

My competition this year includes many VERY big names — Paolo Bacigalupi, Suzanne Collins, Scott Westerfeld, Holly Black, Pearl North, Megan Whalen Turner, and — sheesh! — even Terry Pratchett! It is an amazing honor to be nominated in such company. My thanks to every science fiction and fantasy writer out there who voted for Hereville.

My congratulations as well to my friend (and someone who strongly influenced Hereville) Rachel Swirsky. Her novella ‘‘The Lady Who Plucked Red Flowers beneath the Queen’s Window’’ is nominated for this year’s “best novella” Nebula Award. “The Lady Who Plucked…” is an incredible story, and I would have been shocked if it weren’t nominated.

Comic Book Of The Month does an episode on Hereville

The Comic Book Of The Month podcast has released an episode focused on Hereville. That’s right, over an hour of people discussing Hereville! How can you miss out on that?

Seriously, I enjoyed their discussion and thought they had some good observations.

Hereville reviewed by Alyssa Rosenberg

Hereville was reviewed on Alyssa Rosenberg’s blog, a blog I’ve been reading for fun since way before Hereville came out! That’s always extra-neat to read.

Two things I thought were neat about Alyssa’s review:

1) The Sondheim reference (I’m a huge Sondheim fanboy).

2) That she didn’t even mention that it’s in comics! The review is all about the story.

Interviewed by Laurel Snyder!

The children’s book writer and general source of awesomeness Laurel Snyder interviewed me on her blog. Here’s a sample of the interview:

Laurel: Do you think books can change the world?

Barry: Definitely, but only the way a conversation can change the world, or a speech, or a TV show. Everything we do changes the world somehow, but usually the changes are very tiny. So to make a big change you need thousands of people (and thousands of books), all pushing to change the world in some direction. A good example is, are there going to be some engaging and interesting Jewish girl characters in kids books? If just one or two books do that, the answer is “no,” but if a whole bunch of us do it, the answer becomes “yes,” and that will make a small but consequential difference in the lives of a lot of Jewish girl readers who want to see themselves reflected in books.

Please go check it out.

Sketches of Fat Guys for Fat People Art Week

It’s Fat People Art Week! A few contributions….

I’m trying to learn how to paint in Photoshop, and I was playing with some more painterly approaches in the drawing below (although I still didn’t give up the crutch of line art!). Still a long way to go…

And here’s the exact same drawing, except I took the colors and just smudged the heck out of them:

Another fat guy drawing, this one finished in my more typical style:

And a third, this time playing around with cross-hatching:

Unshelved features Hereville

Unshelved — which is a huge webcomic for librarians — is featuring Hereville today. They do a visual review sort of thing, rather than the usual prose review, so it’s really neat. Thanks, Unshelved!

Hereville in the Huffington Post!

There’s an article about Hereville in the Huffington Post!

This is the article Bob Smietana of the Religion News Service wrote. Very cool!

Here’s a bit from the article:

Ten-year-old Shira Acklin from the Temple, a Reform Jewish congregation in Nashville, agrees. She’s a fan of the Harry Potter books, and is also a big fan of Mirka.

“I like that the girl is the star — her brother is there but he’s not the star. She is,” Acklin said.

Adventure stories like Mirka’s are rare among Jewish kids’ books, said Heidi Estrin, library director at Congregation B’nai Israel, in Boca Raton, Fla.

Many Jewish books for kids focus on serious topics, like anti-Semitism, or teaching religious topics. If the books include humor, said Estrin, it’s often aimed at parents, not kids.

Not so with Hereville.

“It’s lighthearted in a way that kids can relate to,” said Estrin, who runs The Book of Life, a podcast about Jewish books. “The plot had nothing to do with prejudice — it’s about a girl who wants to fight dragons.”

Read the rest at Huffpo. Thanks, Bob!

(Oh, and if you’re interested in buying a copy of Hereville, the info is here.)

P.S. Check out the comments for a mini-debate between about if an atheist should be writing a religious protagonist.