What is Hereville?
Hereville is a comic book about an 11-year-old troll-fighting Orthodox Jewish girl.
Spunky, strong-willed, eleven-year-old Mirka Hirschberg isn’t interested in knitting lessons from her step-mother, or how-to-find-a-husband advice from her sister, or you-better-not warnings from her brother. There’s only one thing she does want: to fight dragons!
Granted, no dragons have been breathing fire around Hereville, the Orthodox Jewish community where Mirka lives, but that doesn’t stop the plucky girl from honing her skills. She fearlessly stands up to local bullies. She battles a very large, very menacing pig. And she boldly accepts a challenge from a mysterious witch, a challenge that could bring Mirka her heart’s desire: a dragon-slaying sword! All she has to do is find – and outwit – the giant troll who’s got it!
A delightful mix of fantasy, adventure, cultural traditions, and preteen commotion, Hereville will captivate children and grown-ups alike with its exciting visuals and entertaining new heroine.
Hereville is a graphic novel, in bookstores this November
Hereville is published by Abrams, and will be in bookstores everywhere in November of 2010. It will be a hardcover book, 139 pages long (plus a couple of sketchbook pages), and it’ll have a cover price of $15.95 (or $19.95 in Canada).
You can read some reviews of Hereville here.
Hereville the book is written and drawn by Barry Deutsch, with colors by Jake Richmond. Before Hereville was a book, it was a webcomic; the webcomic version has colors by Barry.
Hereville’s Cast of Characters
Eleven-year-old Mirka is the hero. Just ask her, she’ll tell you!
She hasn’t actually fought any monsters yet, and she doesn’t even have a sword. But she’s absolutely positive she’ll be great at being a hero. Someday.
Mirka’s little brother Zindel is nine years old. He’s nice, but sometimes a bit of a brat. Zindel thinks it’s fine for Mirka to pretend to fight off dragons, or even to fight real-life bullies, but doesn’t want her facing any monsters in real life.
Gittel is Mirka’s older sister. Fourteen years old, and very grumpy! Gittel loves Mirka a lot, but wants Mirka to be ordinary and fit in, so that she can grow up and marry a nice boy.
Rochel is ten years old, and she’s Mirka’s stepsister. She’s very nice, but also very giggly. Rochel thinks Mirka being a hero is silly. Rochel thinks everything is silly.
Fruma is Mirka’s stepmother. Even though Fruma is has the longest nose of anyone in Hereville, she’s not an evil stepmother. But she loves an argument! When she’s not making Mirka clean or set the table or learn how to knit, Fruma makes Mirka argue over every little thing.
Mirka discovers this mysterious women’s bizarre and beautiful house, hidden in the woods not far from Mirka’s school. And from that point on, Mirka’s life spins out of control.
There are a lot of interesting things I could tell you about this pig. But I don’t want to give anything away, so you’ll just have to wait to read the comic!
Your timing is excellent; my next daughter will be turning eleven in October. Where do I place my order? And are you gonna offer books with autographs? How ’bout them cool, hand-drawn sketches?
I’ve got a PayPal account that’s just … just … well, it’s empty, but it’s linked to my checking account that will have some funds by Friday. But by November, who knows? Not rushing you or anything….
Thanks, NR!
I guess I will be offering signed and sketched-in copies, but I don’t yet know the details. But I won’t be offering any for sale before they’re in bookstores… and I’m afraid that it definitely won’t be shipping until November.
Professional book publishing companies take things like announced publication dates and shipping schedules very seriously, it turns out!
Professionals: feh. Bunch of killjoys.
But those professionals at Amazon do take pre-orders. If you get to the stage where you’re taking pre-orders for books (especially the signed/sketched varieties!) let us all know. And when November comes, keep your pencils sharpened. Or your electronic pen thingy charged. Or … whatever.
What post-release duties do you anticipate? Will you be touring around promoting the book? And, more specifically, will those post-release duties preclude doodle duty for your legions of loving fans? Seriously, you posted a lot of sketches that you drew for your last edition; I know that must have consumed some serious time.
Finally, as for shipping dates: double feh. As luck has it, my soon-to-be 11-yr-old is not an Orthodox Jewish girl; we’ll go for Xmas.
I expect I will take pre-orders, good point. I will definitely post when I’m ready to begin that. Thanks!
I don’t think I’ll be going on a book tour or anything, but I will be doing at least some comic book conventions. Alas, I don’t have any details yet, but when I do I’ll post them on hereville.com.