While you’re in a spending mood, it’s time to tell you about Squishbook, the best thing you can buy for a primary-school-aged child at this exact moment. (Or ‘elementary-school-aged’ for our toothy alien friends.)
Squishbook is half comics and half about making comics, with a whole extra half on top, of silly nonsense and thoughtful advice — occasionally a challenge to distinguish — all one hundred and fifty percent of it for CHILDS. Perhaps your childs, or any curious and creative childs you might be aware of in your vicinity. You can learn much more about it at the crowdfunding page beneath this link.
Also this link! Squishbook!
It has been exhaustingly compiled by the excellent David Blumenstein, who assembled a crack team of sensitive and whimsical inner-child-havers including Ben Hutchings, Scarlette Baccini, Ive Sorocuk, your hero Patrick Alexander, and the ever-popular Many Others.
Contributor portraits by David Blumenstein
My bits in Squishbook include:
- Erntnence Rotisserie-Ha’pennyworth’s Catalogue of Hats, which is two pages of very much what it sounds like
- A drawing of a truly appalling unicorn, perhaps the worst yet, suitable for colouring in if you can choke back your vomit for long enough
- Answers to children’s questions, for which the publisher (not me) is legally responsible
- Blip Blop Chronicles, starring Li’l Atishoos — a four-page comic about the naughtiest child in the world furiously succeeding at it
Here’s a tiny bit of Blip Blop Chronicles for you, in both roughly pencilled and expertly inked forms:
Squishbook is partly funded by the City of Melbourne but partly funded by YOU, right now, as you head to the crowdfunding page and order some copies for all the children you can think of and also any Grown-Ups with a Sense of Wonder that you haven’t been able to rid yourself of socially.
The crowdfund ends in one week-ish (November 28th) and is already near its goal, but you know what? The print run actually costs twice as much as the goal! So if you can help to push the final total way past that goal, that would help to soothe David’s stress-related brain rash, I bet.
Will you still be able to order copies from the Pozible page after the crowdfund ends? I… I think so? I’m pretty sure yes you will. But if you are reading this in time, go and place an order now and get a cool thing for someone’s Christmas. “Ooh mama, it’s gonna be a zing-daddy boobly-o!” as the beloved carol goes.
