Review by Win Wiacek
Once upon a time – and for the longest time imaginable – comics were universally denigrated as a creative and narrative ghetto cherished only by children and simpletons. For decades the producers, creators and lovers of the medium struggled to change that perception and gradually acceptance came. Now most folk accept that the word and pictures in sequential union can make stories and tell truths as valid, challenging and life-changing as any other full-blown art-form
Sadly, along the way the commercial underpinnings of the industry went too far. Once there were a myriad of successful, self-propagating comics scrupulously generating tales and delights intended to entertain, inform and educate such specific demographics as Toddler/Kindergarten, Young and Older Juvenile, General, Boys and Girls periodical publications. Nowadays in Britain and America there are few exceptions to industry licensed tie-ins and spin-offs for younger readerships. However, the book trade has moved with the times and where numerous publishing houses have opened comic divisions, one in particular has gone all-out to cultivate tomorrow’s graphic narrative nation.
Toon Books/Raw Junior was established by Art Spiegelman and Francoise Mouly intended and designed to provide beautiful, high-quality comics stories in premium formats to entice pre-schoolers and beginning readers into a lifelong love affair with strips in particular and reading in general.
Benny and Penny in The Big No-No! is the second in an ongoing series of complete tales starring a typical brother-and sister act of sometimes wayward suburban mice, picking up after Just Pretend.
Author Geoffrey Hayes is a veteran of the children’s entertainment scene, having written and/or illustrated more than forty books and proudly affirms that Benny and Penny’s anthropomorphic exploits are drawn in coloured pencil.
When a new kid moves in next door bellicose, rambunctious older brother Benny is keen to sneak a peek through the garden fence, but is distracted by his annoying little sister. Soon his attention wanders, but when he can’t find his pail, suspicion quickly settles on the mysterious as yet unseen newcomer.
Taking stuff is a “No-No”, something you just don’t do, but then again so is climbing into someone else’s garden uninvited – especially if they leave such big, scary-looking footprints. When Benny finds a pail in the dirt, he indignantly reclaims it and gets into a literal mud-slinging match with the little mole girl Melina. He even calls her a monster! Escaping the mean new kid and running safely back to their own yard, the mice then discover Benny’s pail, just where he left it.
Aimed at the four and above age range and released as a child-sized (236x162mm), gloriously evocative, beguilingly beautiful 32 page full colour hardback, Benny and Penny in The Big No-No! is the kind of pictorial treasure that kids will be drawn back to over and over again. No wonder it won a Theodor Seuss Geisel Award. The Toy-Breaker follows.
