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We went to the Brooklyn Book Festival this past weekend! It was a lot of fun — and we got to spend some time with some great comics creators, including Gene Luen Yang, Raina Telgemeier, Dave Roman, Paul Pope, Lucy Knisley, Faith Erin Hicks, and Mike Cavallaro!
Pictures!
Mike Cavallaro (Foiled) and Faith Erin Hicks (Nothing Can Possibly Go Wrong) meet at the Fantagraphics run-up festival party at Bergen Street Comics!
Gene Luen Yang signs a stack of Boxers & Saints for the CBLDF that’s so large that you can’t actually see him behind it. He’s there, we promise!
Raina Telgemeier (who contributed to our amazing just-published-this-week anthology Fairy Tale Comics), Gene Luen Yang (Boxers & Saints), and Jarrett Krosoczka (Lunch Lady) do live drawing with prompts from the kids in the audience!
And here are all the kids (and adults!) in the audience.
They’re excited!
Some excellent art was made (including pigs with mustaches).
Gene Luen Yang signs a copy of Level Up for a fan.
Then there was a panel with Jeff Smith (Rasl), Paul Pope (Battling Boy), and Faith Erin Hicks (Nothing Can Possibly Go Wrong) — a discussion of comics and science fiction!
Gene Yang was also part of a panel (with Kikuo Johnson, Francoise Mouly, and Barbara Tversky) talking about using comics in education — an important topic for all of us!
Gene discussed the growing levels of visual literacy that we have in our society, and the importance of educating kids so that they can deal with it in a thoughtful way — rather than just a reactive way.
At one point, when he had to be out of his classroom, he started videotaping lectures for his students.
This didn’t go over well, so he started drawing comics (about factoring!) for them instead.
And this was the result:
Yay local book festival! It’s wonderful that NYC’s book festival has such a strong comics presence — they have great books and great authors there every year!
