Comic Boom - Comics in Education with The Rickard Sisters

In this week's episode Lucy chats to comics creating duo The Rickard Sisters.

Scarlett & Sophie Rickard, sisters who work together to make graphic novels.

Sophie does the words and Scarlett draws the pictures. Scarlett has been drawing since before Sophie was born, and Sophie has been telling her what to draw since she learned to talk. Their first graphic novel was Mann’s Best Friend (2017).

 The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists was published in Autumn 2020 by SelfMadeHero, a graphic adaptation of Robert Tressell’s long and heavy-going socialist classic. It was released in the US and Canada in December 2021 and will soon be available in translation in France. The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists was nominated in the category Best Adaptation in the 2022 Eisner Awards.

In Autumn 2022 they brought out No Surrender, also with SelfMadeHero. This book is a graphic adaptation of Constance Maud’s suffrage classic.

Scarlett's recommendations:
Old Macdonald had Some Flats by Judi and Ron Barret
Hostage by Guy Delise

Sophie's recommendation:
The Motherless Oven by Rob Davis

This episode of Comic Boom is sponsored by ALCS, The Authors Licensing and Collecting Society.

Connect with The Rickard Sisters:
Twitter/X: @RickardSisters
Instagram: @TheRickardSisters
Website

Follow the podcast:
Insta: @comic_boom_podcast
Twitter/X: @Lucy_Braidley
Contact: comicboompodcast@gmail.com

Music by John_Sib from Pixabay

Transcript

0:09

Hello, and welcome to comic boom, the comics and education podcast. If you're interested in hearing more about the crossover between comics and education, then this is the podcast for you. My name is Lucy Starbuck Bradley. And each week I'll be joined by a fellow educator and academic, a librarian or a creator of comics to discuss their journey into comics and provide some inspiration to influence your practice and hopefully shine some light on some titles you can bring into your libraries classrooms, and hopefully onto your bookshelves at home too. This episode of comic, boom is sponsored by ALCS the authors licensing and collecting society. Hello, everyone today's episode. I'm very excited because I will be speaking to the Ricard sisters, Sophie and Scarlet Ricard who collaborate to create brilliant graphic novels. So if he does the words and Scarlet draws the pictures, as it says on their website, they were brought up in the Ribble valley in Lancashire. And a lot of their work features stories from around that region as well. For example, no surrender, which we'll we'll talk about in this episode. Scarlet has worked as a commercial artist, illustrator signwriter and portrait painter. Sophie has worked as a civil servant pub landlady cabin crew, and child counselor. So a real variety of roles leading up to becoming graphic novelists. I love that. The ragged Charles a philanthropist was published in autumn 2020 by self-made hero. It's a graphic adaptation of Robert Trestles socialists classic. In autumn 2022, they then bought out no surrender also was self-made hero. That book was a graphic adaptation of Constance Maud's suffrage classic. in this episode, we hear all about how they work together. And collaborate on that book despite living 200 miles apart as always. I'm really fascinated by the way in which people work together to create. Books the records, this is a great example. Absolutely loved talking to them, finding out about their work about them. there are approaches to adapting classic literature and bringing it to a new audience in graphic novel form. Really really interesting and bring such a new element to discussions around the role that graphic novels can have in classrooms and libraries, I think is a really brilliant angle to take Sophie and Scarlet are also part of our lakes, international comics, art festival collaboration. They'll be at the festival this year. And talk to us a little bit about that we may remember we ran special episodes last year in the run-up to the lakes, international comics, art festival, featuring guests that would be appearing at the festival itself we are doing the same this year. I'm delighted to announce that the next four episodes will be lakes, international comics, art festival specials. A really interesting bunch of creators who will all be also be appearing at the festival at the end of September. So the festival is back at bonus on Windemere from Friday the 27th to Sunday, the 29th of September, 2024. You can get tickets online if you're up near that way. I'd definitely recommend it. I'll be traveling quite some distance to attend, and it is definitely worth it from my perspective. The events include live draws, interviews, presentations, workshops, exhibitions, book, launches, events for children with the little lift calf activities. There's also a comics marketplace where you can spend more money than you intended to on comics. I'm sure I will be. And it provides a chance to get up close and talk to meets comics creators from across the world. And it really is an international event. So really looking forward to speaking to some creators who will be at the festival over the next three episodes after this one. Definitely recommend. Getting out, out to, um, lakes, international comics office. Right. And if you can't just checking it on their website, they Little LICAF, their children education arm. Provide some really interesting, and top quality resources for teaching with comics in the classroom too. So definitely check that out. If you're teaching with comics or running a comics club in your library. I definitely recommended. But now onto the main event for this episode, talking to Sophie and Scarlet Ricard, here's what they had to say.

Lucy SB: 3:49

Hello Sophie and Scarlet, welcome to Comic Boom.

Scarlett Rickard: 3:51

Hello Lucy, thanks very much for having us.

Lucy SB: 3:54

You are very welcome. I'm going to start the episode off, as I always do, by asking, I'll ask Scarlet first, can you tell me a little bit about your journey as a comics reader? Where did that all start for you? Was that from childhood or a little bit later on?

Scarlett Rickard: 4:09

It's a funny one this, I think it, I've never really been a comics reader. which is a funny thing. Um, I, I think my first introduction to comics was like a lot of people, Raymond Briggs, um our grandmother had Father Christmas in the room where we used to go and stay when we stayed with them. And we were there most weekends. When we were kids. And so, I remember reading that, but thinking that that was the only book like that, I didn't know it was a thing that you could have comics. I thought it was just Raymond Briggs had done this one thing. And I remember just loving the observation of the every day and the sort of absurdity of it was right up my street. and then much later when I was about 14. to go down to stay with our, our dad and his wife down in Kent and, his wife had a, a book of, Posey Simmons, like her sort of Guardian comics, and I was just fascinated by that, and I read it over and over and over again, and a lot of the references went right over my head, no idea,

Lucy SB: 5:15

yeah,

Scarlett Rickard: 5:16

about that sort of highfalutin London dinner party set. Um, but, again, it was her observation, she's so good at just observing everyday life and, you know, pinpointing stuff like that. So, so I was into those things, but really I'm not, embarrassingly, I'm not a big reader. I do struggle quite a lot, with reading like normal books. I'm not diagnosed but I think I'm probably ADHD and I just struggle with the concentration and it's sort of similar for me with all books because I need to put a lot of effort into sort of concentration and blocking everything else out in order to absorb the information and I always feel like I've got other things I should be doing

Lucy SB: 6:05

Yeah.

Scarlett Rickard: 6:06

it's frustrating. but I think those two things were the sort of seminal. comics

Lucy SB: 6:10

and do you enjoy exploring now the other comics that are out there as an adult? Or is that still something that you maybe do less for pleasure, more for, for, for research

Scarlett Rickard: 6:20

I, I, um, don't tend to do a lot for research, but, I mean, I love, there's so many fantastic things coming out, and I love, you know, the, the style of stuff, and there's great stories, but I just don't have time at the moment to properly read anything, because I'm always working. Um, so I feel guilty that I'm not like, I'm not with it. You know, about what people have been doing recently because I've just been head down drawing.

Lucy SB: 6:48

getting, yeah, exactly. It's quite an all consuming task, I imagine. Sophie, how about you? Was yours a very similar journey, or was did you have a bit of a different path?

Sophie Rickard: 6:56

Well, one thing that you're going to realize from spending this time with us is that Scarlett and I are completely different from each other. We are, like, people sometimes ask, are you real sisters or, like, metaphorical sisters? And I'm like, no, no, we are real sisters. We grew up together. We have the same parents. But we have not very much in common apart from that. So. I had the Beano like every other self respecting tomboy of the generation. But other than that, obviously reading the same books that Scarlet read, it's true that we just don't have like comics, what I think of as heritage. So sometimes the comics community Well, I mean, always the comics community is extremely welcoming and friendly and encouraging. when, when, when one makes work. But we find ourselves feeling a little bit sometimes like, imposters because we don't have this background steeped in comics culture. Like we were not going to comic cons as teenagers. We were not reading. any Batman, Spider Man, anything like that. We don't really understand.

Lucy SB: 8:06

Yeah, I've, I have the same thing. Like I didn't read a lot of, you know, there's, there's so much that I feel like people assume that you've, you've read or accessed or been really immersed in. And I'm like, well, I don't really know much about superhero comics at all apart from the movies. Um, and, um, I'm more like came, yeah, I did read them as a child, but I'm more, my passion developed more as an adult. And so, yeah, I'm more interested in kind of like stories about women and, you know, and. Different things like that. Autobiography and stuff that maybe isn't, people don't know much about outside the comic scene. So when people know that I like comics, they assume I'm talking about superhero comics and it's like, no, no.

Sophie Rickard: 8:49

a very exciting medium. frustrating when it's described as though it's a genre. So you have, you know, the history section and the art section and the comic section, and it just makes no sense because the comics that we're making. And the Batman, Spider Man comics are not very closely related. It's a way of expressing it. That's exciting. And it means that people aren't necessarily accessing it. So we have feedback that for quite a lot of our readers, particularly with the ragged trouser philanthropists, that that was the first comic first full length work of narrative art. They'd attempted to read and they didn't know

Lucy SB: 9:32

mm,

Sophie Rickard: 9:32

which is a

Lucy SB: 9:33

yeah. Yeah, completely, but great that there's something out there that you've made that can, can bring people into this Scarlet, how did it, how did it then turn out that you've, you're making graphic novels then, how did this happen? Amazing.

Scarlett Rickard: 9:50

since I was small. And I just, I think when I was really small, I just used to use it as a way of, sort of processing what was happening around me. And so I just used to draw every day as a sort of winding down thing, I think. I'm really early on, I really struggled to. to decide what to draw, because there's just too much stuff out there. Like, it's so immersive, the world. There's too many things, and I could never just pick one thing to draw. So, Sophie, who's always had stories in her head, all, ever since she was really small, used to tell me what to draw, to take the pressure off. So I just used to say, Oh, Sophie, tell me what to draw. And Sophie would say, I

Sophie Rickard: 10:39

head. But I can quite clearly remember sitting at the dining table And it being high, like, so I was quite a small child, but I don't know how young I was and, and doing Scarlet saying, tell me what to draw and I would say a thing and then add to it and being told to stop breathing on you because I would be trying to watch,

Scarlett Rickard: 11:02

don't mind that now.

Sophie Rickard: 11:04

I try and keep my distance

Scarlett Rickard: 11:07

So yes, it was a natural progression really for us because Sophie's a writer and I'm a drawer and we wanted to tell stories. And so it was kind of, we sort of fell into it because it was the best way for us to tell stories. and also the kind of the idea that if you work together you're more likely to actually do something, you're more likely to finish a project, you're egging each other on. And so like, I could eventually maybe have, you know, written a comic or a picture book or something. And so if he could have eventually written a novel, but, but I think the two of us together. made it actually happen. So we combined our strengths. So the first book we did was an original fiction, which was Man's Best Friend. And we did, we worked on that together for fun. kind of, I mean, it was sort of like inventing comics in a stupid way because we didn't have any proper reference. Just thinking about it now, looking back on it, it was like, yeah, we

Sophie Rickard: 12:12

and we didn't ask for any help. We just. We just went for it, but we weren't taking ourselves very seriously either. We were just having a good time.

Scarlett Rickard: 12:20

Yeah. yeah, we just did it for the fun of it. and really enjoyed it. So we decided to keep doing it.

Lucy SB: 12:25

So from that, did you develop a kind of a way of working that you replicated on your future projects? I'm fascinated by the collaboration that goes on with comics making. I find it really, really interesting how different people work together. And yeah, I don't know, Sophie, maybe you can start us off with explaining how that duo works.

Sophie Rickard: 12:44

So our collaboration methods have developed over time, but it's not that different to how we approach Man's Best Friend. So the Main thing to understand is that we live about 250 miles apart. So we don't see each other in 3d very often at all. In fact, often the time we see each other is coming to LICAF. But then we get to go on a jolly together. So we've been collaborating online since before it was cool. Since way before COVID we were using, email and FaceTime to get things done. But essentially it goes like this. We have an idea for a story, whether that's an original story or a proposal of a book to adapt. And then we discuss it a lot and then I spend time with it and turn it into a sort of script, a bit like a film script, not at all like a comic script. So I'm not. At all as prescriptive of what as what we have since discovered real comics writers do I would not dream of telling Scarlet what angle to draw something from like I will tell her what to put on the page if it's important for the plot and I write the dialogue, but I don't

Scarlett Rickard: 14:02

But not but you don't do it in the sense of like what panels are gonna be there though Do you just say oh this house this house needs to have steps to the

Sophie Rickard: 14:11

yeah. So it looks like a screenplay and it'll say something like, uh, uh, Joe is waking up, it's dark outside still, and he's wearing his pajamas. Like that's the kind of direction you might get. And then when that's finished, we'll read over it together. And at that point we do the most collaborative bit, which is we get a lever arch file full of A4 copy paper, usually already printed on one side. Cause we're cheap and Scarlet has a pencil and we go through the script and she really roughs out. What is going to go on each page so we can work out our left and right so we can get our double page spreads in the right places so that we can make sure where the dialogue is going to go on the page and we go through the whole book like that. So this is something we learned the hard way with the Ragged Trousered Philanthropist but I'll never quite forgive myself that Scarlett drew a whole chapter that's not in the book. It got cut.

Lucy SB: 15:13

Yikes.

Sophie Rickard: 15:14

So we're much much better at planning now. And not wasting effort.

Lucy SB: 15:20

Mm.

Sophie Rickard: 15:21

so when we've got that rough version, then it's over to Scarlett and I start thinking about the next thing. And what do you do next, Scarlett?

Scarlett Rickard: 15:32

What to do next? So, so on the, on the rough version, we have, like code letters that, that attach to the script. So every time there's a bit of dialogue, it's, we have A, B, C, whatever next to it on the script. And I just, I've put that in the speech bubbles in the rough. So I know approximately what's going to go in each. bubble and then I lay the book out, on the computer and InDesign with all the panel layout and everything based on the rough. And then I draw it all on an iPad, which, I used to feel really uncomfortable about that because I hated the idea of not having originals. It didn't feel like proper somehow. Um, but actually it's really changed my life. I, I can, I can draw anywhere without making a mess. I, you know, I can just pick it up for five minutes on a train and carry on where I left off. And it's, it's just, and also Sophie and I both have a connective tissue disability. Which is genetic, not a coincidence, which means that, I actually find it very difficult to draw extended periods on paper now, without my hands going into spasm, and I find it really hard, but the iPad's really smooth, so I can draw for hours without it affecting me, yeah. So, so we, so what I do is every, I do it page by page, so I lay out, I lay out chapter by chapter on the computer, but then on the iPad it's page by page, so I'll sketch it out based on the rough, and then draw it properly, and then colour it, and do the lettering and everything, because I, for some reason, I like to do all the lettering by hand rather than using a font. and then at the end of the day I send the page to Sophie and then we have a little chat about it and make sure it's working all right and because often she's not expecting what I send her because of course I'm imagining it different to how she imagined it and So, so we have like a little conversation if something's not completely clear or, or Sophie's thinking about something that we need to put in for later on in the plot that like needs to be in the background or something, I'll add those bits after that. And then when I've completed a chapter, we send it to our editor, David Hine, who is brilliant with all of this stuff. And he goes through the chapter and. and comes back to us if there's, you know, something that doesn't make sense. And I mean, he's, he's

Sophie Rickard: 18:00

generous notes, doesn't he?

Scarlett Rickard: 18:02

really lovely, yeah, very generous. And, and he's taught us a lot about making comics in this, in the time since, because we, he started with us with the Ragged Trouser Philanthropist self made hero, our publisher put us together with him. And so a lot of the stuff he's taught us is real craft stuff that we obviously didn't

Lucy SB: 18:22

Didn't

Scarlett Rickard: 18:22

because we made it up as we went along. Yeah. So we've learned a lot.

Sophie Rickard: 18:27

so when it came to doing No Surrender, we asked a self made hero if we could have Dave again, and they said yes. And he's also working with us on this one that we're working on at the moment as well.

Lucy SB: 18:38

so he's like the third person in the team.

Scarlett Rickard: 18:40

Yeah. Yeah.

Lucy SB: 18:42

That's brilliant. And how do you come about to actually, sort of, select the projects that you're going to work on? You've got two historical novels. Just being translated into comic form. is that what you see as your USP or are you thinking of doing something different in the future or what draws you to those projects?

Scarlett Rickard: 18:59

It's, it's a funny thing.

Sophie Rickard: 19:00

how it came about, Scarlet, I mean, I always blame her for this. It was Scarlet's idea. She could, she explained earlier that she's not a big reader. And I, as I said, we're very different from each other. I am a big reader and there's nothing I like more than long, 19th century, early 20th century novels, preferably everyone dies in the end. I like them to be difficult and depressing if at all possible. And so Scarlet could see that particularly in the case of the Ragged Trouser Philanthropist, that it's one of those books that people wish they'd read, but it's actually really difficult and that there is a lot of value in it. In the work that people are not able to get to because it's hiding behind 255, 000 words of not d so it's making the most of our shared talents. To create something from the Ragged Childhood Philanthropist that people can access by using what Scarlet's good at, which is a picture telling a thousand words. And so of course, once we'd done that once, we then started realizing, well, often people come say, have you thought of this? Have you tried this? Don't know. They suggest books to us, but no surrender. Yeah. Who was like a sister to the ragged trousers philanthropists in that it's from the same era and but it's and it's telling

Lucy SB: 20:23

Uh,

Sophie Rickard: 20:25

different political story, but in a very similar way. So it's completely fiction, but it's written by someone who was there who had boots on the ground and was part of the movement. So it's very authentic. And the one that we're working on now also fits into that category. Similar era. written by, it's, it's raising the voice of someone who is there. And what we hope to do in the adaptations is not just to make them accessible, but to make them newly relevant so that people can enjoy the ideas that are in the story. And to feel close to the people in a way that reading the history wouldn't, because you can identify with them.

Scarlett Rickard: 21:06

there's something about sort of the, um, Edwardian prose from, from this distance that, that's like a layer of thick brown varnish over the past, and I think it's hard for people to access the feeling that these are real people who are just like you and me because of the because of that. and so one of the things that's quite fun to do is to try and scrape that back a bit and, you know, get our cotton buds out, whatever they do in conservation. Um, and, and try and bring those, Bring those people to, to the fore, and just remind everybody that these are real people who had real lives. So that's part of the fun of it, but also with the Ragged Trousered Philanthropist, I attempted to read it several times. like a lot of people have, I found it really heavy going, but what, but I also found the description fascinating because he was a very descriptive writer and he described every tiny detail of, you know, painting a door or something. And I, I was trying to read it and thinking, God, if all of this description was in a drawing, the book would be half the length. It'd be so much easier to read.

Lucy SB: 22:20

Yeah,

Scarlett Rickard: 22:21

And that's kind of where I originally got the idea. And I actually thought of that before we ever did Man's Best Friends. I didn't think that I would do it. I just thought, oh,

Lucy SB: 22:29

Yeah, Wouldn't it be great? Um, Uh,

Scarlett Rickard: 22:36

of, I think I must have had it in the back of my mind. And then, of course, when, uh, the sort of Corbyn movement in the Labour Party was happening and everyone started talking about the Ragged Trousered philanthropist again, it made me think of the fact I'd, I'd thought that once. And so I suggested it to Sophie because by then we'd already, we'd done Man's Best Friend, so we were sort of a bit more like ready to do a new thing. And we weren't, we weren't looking for an adaptation to do. It

Sophie Rickard: 23:04

We probably, we probably won't be drawing Edwardian politics indefinitely. We've described this slavery, which is our current work in progress, as the third in a trilogy. So the three go together. And this slavery draws the threads of, politics of femaleness and industrial labor politics together into one. So it kind of is quite a tidy way to end a set of three.

Scarlett Rickard: 23:32

yeah, it's a searing, it's another searing attack on capitalism and the patriarchy, but in one book. So, so

Sophie Rickard: 23:40

I think Scarlet, would. Who would really like to be allowed to draw a light switch one day? A plug

Scarlett Rickard: 23:46

yeah, I just like to, it's all those little things you just never think about, like when, when you're drawing a character and you've got to think about them switching the light on, you know, like, have they got, have they got electricity? Is it gas? Has the gas been cut off? Have they got an oil lamp? Is it just a candle situation? Like,

Lucy SB: 24:07

I was going to ask you about the sort of research that goes on. Like, just thinking about even just like the clothes that people are wearing and the, how much research do you have to do to get that right? Or are you not so worried about the details of that being completely accurate? Or is it more about the general sort of vibe? Are

Sophie Rickard: 24:26

you would think from looking at what Scarlet draws, that she spends hours and hours looking up this stuff, but she just seems to just know it.

Lucy SB: 24:35

you a time traveller?

Scarlett Rickard: 24:37

we were brought up in, in, um, a very sort of, I suppose, a very, um, curious, environment where our grandparents, particularly were really interested in domestic history. used to show me, she had all kinds of weird things in the kitchen, Victorian implements, and she'd show me how to use them and stuff. And so a lot of it is just in there somewhere. And, uh, like we've, we've grown up with, you know, old furniture and our dad's a joiner. He specialised in old buildings. My husband's a painter and decorator and I've done work with him, you know, so there's, and I've worked as a sign writer in the past. So, All of these things kind of tied in together, but, I do love a bit of research though, it has to be said,

Sophie Rickard: 25:26

You've always been into history, haven't you? Like, right from, like, you even enjoyed it at school and stuff. But you, you go shopping, don't you? When, when we first start,

Scarlett Rickard: 25:38

yeah, I, I've got, I've got Pinterest, and I, I go around, like, finding good outfits and stuff, so I, I go shopping with no money on Google, on Google Images, and, and anything that looks, Like, oh, I could imagine that person wearing something like that, then I just save it in the Pinterest for that person. And then I can go back and refer to it in the future. So like when I'm having to draw, yeah, when I'm having to draw the same place, like the same room over and over and over again, it's quite good to have the original source material every now and then to just refer to. Like, you know, I'm drawing a room that's got a grand piano in it at the moment. And every now and then, instead of using it from my memory, I'll just have another look at it just in case I've forgotten how it goes. But I'm very, very lucky in the sense that, I've always, I've always really drawn from memory. I don't tend to use, I don't tend to draw from sight.

Sophie Rickard: 26:36

Got a very good, it seems to me, remarkable 3D visual imagination. So if you draw a scene from one side, And then you start to draw it from the other side. You just know what it looks like already, which absolutely baffles me. I can't even reverse park. Like, I don't understand how it works, but it, it comes easily to you, doesn't it? That 3D imagination.

Lucy SB: 27:01

That's really interesting.

Scarlett Rickard: 27:03

Yeah, I sort of, I think of myself being in the room and so I'm sort of in my head moving around and thinking about what's behind you and what's in front of you. I love all I love the challenge. And also what you were saying about, accuracy in some ways. Yeah. Accuracy is great. And, and it helps to be weird to make, the reader feel immersed in the world, I think. But I don't take it so seriously that I can't sleep at night. Like, I think it's like, um, it's like adapting for film. I think sometimes things will just not be quite right because you can't get everything perfect. And one of the benefits of drawing 1910 is that nobody's around now who remembers what it was like.

Sophie Rickard: 27:47

We do have like,

Scarlett Rickard: 27:48

a bit.

Sophie Rickard: 27:50

we have an overriding principle that the story and the communication of the story and the enjoyment of the reader comes first before everything.

Lucy SB: 28:00

Mm.

Sophie Rickard: 28:01

And so, we will adapt for the enjoyment of the reader first, then accuracy, authenticity comes after that. So sometimes we will bend the rules to make it work. You've got to make the most of the medium, but also it's, there is no point in making a perfect book if nobody reads it,

Lucy SB: 28:24

Yeah. Yeah. Really agree. Yeah. And how do you, I'm really interested in character because there's, there's, a lot of people in your books. Like, there's a lot of different characters and they all, they, I feel like. They feel really real as well and, you know, very distinct from one another and, but in terms of the character design, it's not like a simple, like, oh, that one's got a hat on and therefore every time I see someone's hat I know it's that character. It's, you know, they're very specific. That's how I draw. Stick a hat on them. That technique. Exactly. So how do you do that character design?

Sophie Rickard: 29:00

So it comes from the two of us being so different again, I'm just realizing. So I've got quite an analytical way, uh, uh, approach. And so when I'm doing the adaptation, I try and distill. It's like, um, having squash instead of juice. You've got to do a lot with the juice. volume. So you've got to try and distill a character into their most essential features. And so, um, I, I might end up cutting things about them that are less relevant to their purpose in the story, that kind of thing. And so I have this analytical framework that they go into, but then when I hand over to Scarlet, she has this really immersive style where she basically walks for a mile in their shoes and she's drawing them. She, she does the faces like she is really imagining being there with them. They feel very real. And so the combination of the two, I think is how it ends up being that way. We do do the other things though. Like for example, in No Surrender, we've got three. Prominent women. And we've got a brunette, a redhead and a blonde. Cause why wouldn't

Lucy SB: 30:11

yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,

Sophie Rickard: 30:15

but yeah, and trying in the Ragged trouser philanthropist, at least people kept the same outfits on mostly all the way through. So you can distinguish them by their clothes in no surrender. It was part of the plot that our main character, Jenny would like go dressing up as this and then that, and so you've got to make sure she's still her when she takes her dress off, you know.

Scarlett Rickard: 30:36

Yeah, and actually the characters in this slavery that we're working on now, again, You know change clothes and experiences and stuff and you have to make sure they're definitely still there yeah, it's an interesting one. I think um, I don't think Of myself as being great on character design. Like I don't put an awful lot of time and effort into it Um, I tend to i've found that I can't really draw them until I know them Which, I know it sounds, it's all chicken and egg, but I can't know them until I've seen them living and, and saying things and thinking stuff. So I just start, I start the book and then get to, get to know them while I'm drawing them and then inevitably go back to the first few pages and redraw them at the end

Lucy SB: 31:28

That's really interesting. And then readjust it back to the person that you now know. I love that.

Scarlett Rickard: 31:32

Yeah, because it is really weird how they become their own selves very quickly

Sophie Rickard: 31:38

You've also got some interesting likenesses in this slavery. We've got a mother and daughter that look related, that not alike, but you can see where she gets it from. And a father, a father and daughter as well in that same way. And that's an interesting new angle for us. It's been fun to work on that.

Lucy SB: 31:55

Mmm,

Scarlett Rickard: 31:56

and as they get, because in this slavery there's a time jump of six years in the middle of the book, so I've also had to make the characters suddenly six years older. you know, and, and it's, six years is like a subtle amount time in a way

Lucy SB: 32:10

Yeah, exactly, because it's not like 20 years

Scarlett Rickard: 32:12

but at the beginning of the book there's like toddlers who are now, you know, seven or eight or whatever, you know. Yeah, it is really, it is fascinating. One of the really, I find it a bit embarrassing, the one we're working on at the moment, the two main characters are sisters, and this is nothing to do with us, this was written by Ethel Carney Holdsworth, who wrote the original. The description that Sophie, because Sophie does like a cast list,

Sophie Rickard: 32:37

I have to confess, I made a PowerPoint.

Scarlett Rickard: 32:40

She did. And it's been very useful.

Sophie Rickard: 32:44

Thank

Lucy SB: 32:44

This

Scarlett Rickard: 32:44

Thanks, though.

Lucy SB: 32:45

cute.

Scarlett Rickard: 32:48

Yeah, she made the PowerPoint of all the main cast and then the sort of, extras and stuff, you know. So, so I got to say, and, and also, God, she, she, Sophie really does love a spreadsheet. She also laid out the whole story and where all the characters reappear. So, so when I've got crowd scenes, In this book that I'm working on now, the crowd, the people in the crowd are recognisable characters that will recur

Lucy SB: 33:16

Mm,

Scarlett Rickard: 33:17

and, That was because Sophie had like laid it all out, which chapter they were going to appear in and stuff. and so, Sophie had given me a little bit of a description and described one sister as being like a dove and the other sister being like a hawk. and the way I've drawn them, I've accidentally made them really look like us, which is really, like, it's really embarrassing. If anything. I've turned into the character I'm drawing because when I started I had shorter hair and it wasn't that curly and suddenly I've got like long curly hair and that's this. It's really strange. Yeah, I'm turning into her.

Lucy SB: 33:55

That is creepy.

Scarlett Rickard: 33:56

I didn't turn into Frank Owen, but. Well, I don't know. Maybe I did. Maybe I did politically.

Lucy SB: 34:02

Um.

Scarlett Rickard: 34:02

I'm not sure. But it is fascinating the way that characters take on their own, their own selves.

Lucy SB: 34:09

Yeah, that's really interesting. Can you tell us a little bit more about your next project? When's that going to be out? Is there like an easy synopsis that listeners can, uh, just to whet their appetite for the next book?

Sophie Rickard: 34:23

So this slavery. is a novel written by a woman called Ethel Carney Holdsworth who,, started work in the mills age 11. Yeah. And then when she was 18, had her first book of poetry published, she was an extremely talented writer who went on to become a really successful novelist. She wrote romantic novels about mill girls. And one of them was actually made into a film in the twenties. So it must have been one of the first doing the film of the books. She was outselling H. G. Wells. She was incredibly successful. This Slavery is her unpopular book because she, was so rude as to mix romance and politics. So instead of it just being a cheap romance for mill girls to read, it was a cheap romance for mill girls to read that encouraged them to go on strike. So, so the book itself is the story of two sisters who grow up Working in the mills, their father is dead and they live with their mother and grandmother in a little house in respectable poverty. And then it just very much like today, it only takes one thing to go wrong. And they are destitute because the difference between coping and not coping is a very thin line. And basically the story is about what happens next. And the two sisters choose very different paths. One of the sisters is a real firebrand, a very angry person. And she. Becomes politically radicalized and causes no end of trouble. The other sister has chronic illness and has the chance to get out of this life by marrying rich. So she becomes the. other side, if you like, because she marries one of the people who ends up owning a mill. And so the two sisters lives run in parallel in the same time, but having very different experiences. And it all comes to a head in a, piece of industrial action that involves the whole town and all kinds of skullduggery going on. And you really become involved in the moral tussles that the two sisters have and also in their characters, how they choose to react the choices that they make.

Scarlett Rickard: 36:46

And the slavery of the title is, to do with, You either, as a woman, you've got a choice. A working class woman has a choice. You either work in the mill and you're a slave to the boss and the, and the, you know, where you're being paid real pittance. Or you marry a man that you don't love. And then you're sort of under, under him. you've got no other option. And, I mean, obviously, if you're lucky, you can marry a man you do love. But, that's

Lucy SB: 37:13

Yeah.

Sophie Rickard: 37:14

But you still would belong to him.

Scarlett Rickard: 37:15

you still would belong to him. Yeah, you have no, no autonomy. So, yeah.

Sophie Rickard: 37:20

Carney Holdsworth made some really brave and radical points basically raising the question is what is the difference of selling your labor by the hour to run a loom and selling your body by the hour? In other ways. And what is the difference between marriage and that? So it, the, the slavery of the title is about sexual slavery. It's about wage slavery. It's about how the entire economic system is underpinned by this, unpaid labor of women, which is not completely gone away. Has it?

Lucy SB: 37:56

No. That sounds

Scarlett Rickard: 37:59

It's really well written as well. It's exciting. It's got a lot of, riots and fires and lots of romance.

Sophie Rickard: 38:07

of crown scenes, loads of horses, all the things Scarlet likes best when I put them in the script.

Scarlett Rickard: 38:15

Yeah,

Lucy SB: 38:16

Wow, that

Scarlett Rickard: 38:17

I was just thinking another thing. I was just thinking, so we're going back to characters. I was just thinking about the Ragged Trouser Philanthropist. The original story, I think had something like 95 different people in it. and so Sophie had to do quite a lot of work at the beginning to consolidate some of those people into one person or decide who just to cull

Sophie Rickard: 38:40

And that's, that's how the spreadsheet works, because what I would do is work out what a person's function is, and then maybe merge three people into one, so the same person can keep coming back to, to provide a function, as opposed to introducing a new person every time. Or sometimes you might cut a whole B plot. And the other thing the spreadsheet's good for is if somebody dies or goes away, to black them out so you can't accidentally have them at the back of the room in another scene after they've died. Because it would be really easy to do that. When you're drawing a page a day for 18 months, like, it's very easy to lose track of that kind of

Lucy SB: 39:21

yeah, absolutely. I can imagine.

Scarlett Rickard: 39:23

And we're both really enjoying working on it as well, because it was written in East Lancashire, where we're from. So, so there's a real, sort of sense of place about like the, the town itself is a character in this one in a way that it's not really in the others. And to the extent that we, that we've been there and spent days there walking about getting a real feel for the place, which we didn't do before. We've really thrown ourselves into this one, haven't we, in a different way, which is

Sophie Rickard: 39:56

Yeah, it's got real sense of place and a lot of weather.

Scarlett Rickard: 40:00

yeah. I must admit, if I never see a cobble again, I'll be quite happy. Wet cobbles quite a challenge.

Lucy SB: 40:16

I was going to ask you, so obviously social justice is a really clear theme in your work and last year when we did a Lakes International Comics Art Festival special, which is, this is the second year that we've done that, we asked all of the guests on those special episodes a question I just thought was really pertinent to ask you again this year, which do you think that comics can change the world?

Scarlett Rickard: 40:40

I mean, there's, there's a, there's a quote from Marx, Uncle Karl, that Sophie can probably remember better than I can, basically saying that all the novels and stories of, about, about, Economics and politics and the way people live, written by people like Dickens and Tolstoy and people have done more for society than all the economists and politicians put together. Because all it takes is something like Oliver Twist. And people can imagine what it's like to be an orphan,

Lucy SB: 41:16

Mm mm-Hmm

Scarlett Rickard: 41:18

what it might be like to be in debtor's prison, or, you know, like, putting yourself in someone's shoes is a much better way of understanding a situation, I think, than being preached at.

Sophie Rickard: 41:31

So those realist novelists like Flaubert and Dickens and Tolstoy and people like that were getting into the homes of influential people who had the power to change things and asking them to have some sympathy or some empathy with people living in poverty. Which was not really accessible to them before. And so, stories change the world for sure. It's the only thing that really ever does. I mean, a really good example of that is the recent drama about the post office scandal.

Lucy SB: 42:09

Yeah.

Sophie Rickard: 42:09

You know, that's been rumbling on for years, but everybody was talking about it that weekend, weren't they? And comics have their place in that because one of, one of the real drivers as to why we operate in this medium is that there's loads and loads of different ways to tell the story. And there's loads of different types of people in the world. People are able to access or have a preference for different mediums. So there will be some people. Who like me like to sit in silence with a fat book full of words and there are also people who would never engage with that content at all unless it was a film or a graphic novel or a play or a song. Like, why can't we have every version of a story so that as many people as possible can enjoy it?

Scarlett Rickard: 43:02

so it's not specifically that comics on their own can change the world, but as, but as a storytelling medium, it can certainly make a difference to people. And it's interesting. I mean, obviously, you know, I mean, we're kind of riding on Robert Tressel's coattails and, you know, and, Constance Maud and Ethel Carney Holdsworth to an extent with the things that we've been working on recently. But it's so exciting when you meet a young person who's been so taken up with it that it makes them angry or, you know, in fact, I, I was in a bookshop a couple of years ago, just, just after, No Surrender came out. I was in a bookshop and I overheard a woman with two teenage children in, in the shop talking to the shopkeeper. And she was saying about her daughter, it was obviously her daughter and her daughter's friend who were in the shop with her. And she said, oh, she's got really into this. And every now and then she puts it down and just goes, oh, men! And

Lucy SB: 44:01

ha ha ha

Scarlett Rickard: 44:02

And I was just in the background in the shop

Lucy SB: 44:04

ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! ha!

Scarlett Rickard: 44:06

great, you know, it's just, it's so fun when you hear people like really engaging with that, with that content, especially, you know, like there was a young man who was obviously at university or something who saw us on one online thing and he said I've been trying to read the Ragged Trousered Philanthropist but it makes me so angry and we were really pleased

Sophie Rickard: 44:30

So there's nothing we like better than subverting young minds. And that's one of the reasons we have done things like, we've got the Ragged Education Project, so you can donate the cover price of the Ragged Trousered Philanthropist on our website. And we have a big list of school librarians who've requested a copy. And so every time someone donates a copy, we send it to the next school on the list. And we've sent hundreds out that way, but we've got hundreds of names that are still there. Waiting. So it's a really interesting way for, because what we find is that the, fans of the original work come across the comic version and say, I didn't know this kind of thing existed and want to share it. So many people in their sixties and seventies say to us, this was put in my hands when I was a teenager and it's changed the way I've seen the work, the world ever since. And they want to pass that on. And so that's a way of doing it and getting it in school libraries is such a great way of getting in front of hundreds of teenagers.

Lucy SB: 45:35

Yeah, that's brilliant. Can you tell us a little bit about, your relationship with Lakes International Comics Art Festival and what you're hoping to do or see this year at the festival.

Scarlett Rickard: 45:47

We are really excited to be joining in this year because we're big fans of the Lakes International Comic Art Festival. We, we, it's our favorite competition. One, and we've been, we've been going to it. We, we were discussing this earlier, I think since 2017, which is much longer than we thought we had. But anyway, we, we've been going there ever since. We first brought man's best friend out, which we self-published and, and Hawked about the place and took it to to, uh, the

Sophie Rickard: 46:16

In fact, we were remembering this, weren't we, at our first time at the Lakes. We had Man's Best Friend and we were offering it to, Myriad. Is that right? And Daryl Cunningham was sitting at the table. And. I think he insisted on buying one from us, and then he was the person. Yeah, he was the person who taught us that when you sign it, you have to draw a little picture in it. That's how comics naive we were, that we didn't realize that, that, and, Scarlet had to quickly draw a dog in the front for Daryl. And I think about that so often every time we're doing a signing and it's got like more and more elaborate. And I was thinking, you know, it's that kind of thing. People are so kind and the Lakes has got such a fantastic atmosphere for that stuff. And it's lovely to see. familiar faces that you've not seen since the same time last year, but also to meet new people who are making new things all the time. It's lovely.

Scarlett Rickard: 47:15

I love the mixture of stuff, you know, seeing things from around the world, you know, that you wouldn't have any idea about, you know, Indian comics and, and Russian, you know, sort of documentary illustration and, you know, it's just so much fascinating stuff.

Sophie Rickard: 47:33

And they have such great guests as well. Some real, real big names. I've seen people like that you wouldn't expect, like Ian Rankin. And, you know, there's such a broad range. There's always something you didn't know you needed to know about until you got there.

Lucy SB: 47:48

I

Scarlett Rickard: 47:49

yeah. So we're really excited to be, to be taking part this year.

Lucy SB: 47:52

Amazing. I know you're going to be tabling, are you going to be doing a talk? What are you going to be up to? Do

Sophie Rickard: 47:59

we don't tend to have a table. What we do is we kind of tend to camp at self made heroes table and take advantage of their hospitality whenever we can, but. They're very good to us. We are going to be doing a talk this time, about collaboration and adaptation. I believe it's going to be called Collaborating with the Dead. So, just cashing in on some October spookiness.

Lucy SB: 48:22

amazing. To end the podcast, it's nice to have a couple of things to think about, maybe reflections on how your books could be used in education or some reflection on your Experiences and you know what you would have liked in your time at school or any any thoughts Around the role that comics can play in education and

Sophie Rickard: 48:47

I think part of it is this thing that we really feel passionate about is that there are lots of different sorts of readers in the world and I think the term reluctant reader has become a little bit of a sort of shame label and especially for educators that it's something that needs to be solved and that somehow reading for pleasure is in itself a moral good and it has to be a serious book for it to count and you know there's a really big bit weird, all of that kind of edifice that's around enjoying fiction. And I think that to encourage educators to cast the net very widely for what kind of, story enjoyments are available to everybody, is the best way to make sure that people can access. as wide a possible range of ideas. So there are people who have enjoyed the concepts and ideas in our books, which are quite, you know, they're political economy ideas and philosophical ideas, but have been able to access them who would not Have the reading capacity to have read the original. That's what we're in it for. And so to try and break down some of that, stuff about what's a proper book and what isn't, what, what children should be reading and at the same time to, and like when we said, why can't there be lots and lots of versions of a thing to adapt and to work on something that already exists is great if it's really good and you can. Represent it in a way that then it reaches more people. Why not? And that goes all the way down to early years. Like I just remembered that I accidentally said in a talk and I feel embarrassed about it sometimes that I described, Burglar Bill by Janet and Alan Alberg as crime and punishment for Key Stage One, but it's true.

Scarlett Rickard: 50:46

It's true.

Sophie Rickard: 50:47

Yeah, and so, like, those things exist and they are, like, Burglar Bill engages with some really big moral and ethical ideas and it's told so beautifully and simply in narrative art in a way that people can access. You know, maybe Dostoevsky could have taken a leaf out of Janet and Alan Albergh's book.

Scarlett Rickard: 51:09

Yeah. I think as somebody who has, I mean, it's a really weird thing, you know, struggling to read but being able to write quite well, which always confused me because I can't possibly be dyslexic because I can write, but I just really like, when I try and read a book, all I can see is the pattern of the gaps between the words and then my brain just wanders off and I just can't concentrate. I find it very stressful and frustrating because there's a whole world out there. That other people can lose themselves in and I'd love that. I want that. and for me that's, you know, things like telly helps with that because it's so immersive. And what, what we try and do with our books is to make an immersive, an immersive environment for people who struggle to concentrate to really fall into. That's what I hope will happen. Um,

Sophie Rickard: 52:05

And I just don't think it's that unusual to have a mind like Scarlett's. I think that there are lots of people who live that way, who were going around with this idea that everyone else can read, so I just need to be quiet and not make a fuss. And that what, what educators can do is to make as many different formats available as possible.

Lucy SB: 52:26

Yeah, I think that's so true. And that's, yeah, really interesting and how I think just going back to your point around the different types of reading for pleasure and the different motivations and, it's a part of my job at National Literacy Trust. I do teacher training on reading for pleasure. And, one of the things we highlight is a study that was done in Australia about how, you know, people read for information and get enjoyment from that. People read for like, as a functional thing to improve the way that they're, I don't know, could be improving a skill that they need to gain, but it's, they read it for enjoyment and get enjoyment from that. what, from learning the skill through reading and all these different types. The immersive play is just, and the kind of immersion story is just one type of reading for pleasure out of many types of reading for pleasure. And I think that's really an interesting perspective because I think it is definitely in recent years, it, the focus is on everyone should be reading for pleasure and it should be fiction you know, and within the it should be a certain type of book.

Scarlett Rickard: 53:20

yeah. And I think for people like me, it's not for want of trying. Like, I really would love to. I'd love to be somebody who can just lose themselves in a book.

Sophie Rickard: 53:29

There's an interesting side of this that feeds into our process, which is Scarlet discovers or comes across or gets told about some obscure, depressing historical politics book. And she sends me, just read this, read this. I have read some really miserable stuff over the last few years. And the ones we make into books are the good ones.

Scarlett Rickard: 53:53

The other thing that I think is interesting educationally is the opportunity to, bring people into the idea of what it was like to live in the past and, and to try and, and get that sense across in a. In a gentle way. I'm very keen on history not being boring and, people being able to really feel what it's like to be a normal person in the past, not Henry VIII, you know, and,

Sophie Rickard: 54:23

to humanize the people who are doing these things and to make their lives relatable. And I think No Surrender is interesting because you hear people arguing against votes for women, because the contemporary debates for and against, which is sort of a bit shocking, but that's what it was like. And you can relate to, you know, it has reflections in modern conversations about things like climate change and Brexit and so trying to really pull on the threads that make. History now as much as possible so that people can imagine. themselves in those shoes and imagine that those people are just people that it's not even that

Lucy SB: 55:07

yeah. It really comes through to me. I love that, that sort of, the characters really did feel like, the people were real people and that although the world's changed, people haven't, and we still had frustrations and ambitions and, you know, you couldn't get into the feeling like someone that worked in a mill, you know, not happy, but just that was their life and they didn't know any better when actually that's not reality because humans aren't like that. Humans are looking across the road, humans are feeling tired, humans are, you

Scarlett Rickard: 55:33

absolutely, and this whole idea that, because there was a, you know, a lot of infant deaths that parents just got over it and carried on working in the mill and it

Lucy SB: 55:41

same thing that you see in the news today, isn't it? You know, when you see, like, it's the same sort of approach to, you know, when there's migrant deaths and things, it's it's almost completely incomparable.

Scarlett Rickard: 55:52

sort of,

Lucy SB: 55:52

Dehumanization, really.

Scarlett Rickard: 55:54

yeah, this

Sophie Rickard: 55:54

Hmm. Yes, very much that at risk of being political. I think a good example of that is the reaction to the war in Ukraine and the reaction to the war in Gaza.

Lucy SB: 56:05

Yeah,

Scarlett Rickard: 56:06

Yeah, Yeah, to, to compare and contrast

Sophie Rickard: 56:09

How people respond to the human suffering on an individual level is very related to how much or how little people can imagine being in those shoes.

Lucy SB: 56:19

yeah, yeah,

Scarlett Rickard: 56:20

yeah.

Lucy SB: 56:21

agree.

Scarlett Rickard: 56:22

and I think doing the sort of thing, doing comics or, I mean, things like Persep Maus and, you know, those books really bring you into somebody else's entire world so you can understand it. and those things are so valuable. And I think it's sort of important, you know, when you're making stuff like this. One of the reasons that we, the sort of criteria for the books that we've worked on it's really that they are an authentic voice, it's first person, so it's written by somebody who's had the lived experience of what's happening in the book, even though they're fiction, they're all loosely based on fact. and autobiographical in some, in some way or other. I mean Constance Ma wasn't working class,

Sophie Rickard: 57:12

No, she was posh, but she was, she was marginalized because of her gender instead. So each time we've been raising the voice of a marginalized group, who's been trying to say, this is what it's like to live my life. And they've chosen fiction as the way to do it. And the Ragged Trousered Philanthropist is. like rightly famous for being this first fictionalization of a working class life, but No Surrender should be just as famous, but it

Scarlett Rickard: 57:42

And this slavery really should be because this slavery is, is like on a, I think it's better than the

Lucy SB: 57:49

I don't think I can wait for your version to come out. I think I'm going to need to read the, the original of the slavery.

Scarlett Rickard: 57:55

It's great, but it's out of print. You can, you can get it. I think Nottingham Trent University did an edition and I don't know if that's, Yeah. I don't know if it's widely available or

Sophie Rickard: 58:07

called, there's a group called the Pendle Radicals who made a podcast, about this slavery, and that's how we discovered it. But because, although Ethel Kearney Holdsworth was really successful at the time, she later, lost her fortune, or I say lost, she spent her fortune on being a pacifist in World War I. She ran a literary pacifism magazine and poured all of her novel money into it and died in real obscurity. and the book itself is of all of her novels, the, the, the political one. And so it's not something you're going to be able to easily pick up in Waterstones. It is, the prose is really, really good.

Lucy SB: 58:54

Our final question of the podcast, which, and you know, feel free, it could be a picture book, could be comic, could be anything. If we were to add one book to our to be read piles tomorrow, what would you recommend? You can have one each. I'll be generous. Scarlet, do you want to start us off?

Scarlett Rickard: 59:10

I'm going to say something really left field, which is typical of me. Um, there's a book, there's a book called Old MacDonald Had Some Flats, which was written, I think, in the late 60s, early 70s, and it was, it's actually written in New York, so the original is called Old MacDonald Had an Apartment Block, but I don't think it's as good. Um, and, um, I know. And it's basically, it's about the little people standing up against capitalist overlords. And I had it when I was a child and absolutely loved it. Didn't realize, you know, didn't understand that obviously there's more to it than the story But the story is, Old MacDonald is the caretaker of this block of flats, and the tenants are just hard work. And so, as the tenants start moving out, he replaces them with animals and vegetables, and starts growing carrots, and they're coming through the ceiling of the flat below, and stuff like that. And the,, the landlord comes along and tells him off, and tells him to stop it, and, you know, tries to chuck him out, but then realises that they could actually make quite a lot of money with a farm shop. It's, it's really, but the drawings are great and the whole sort of idea of doing something absurd but in normal surroundings, which is all, I love a kitchen sink thing, but that's got some absurdity to it. So yeah, that's a fun book for, for children, you know, children's book.

Lucy SB: 1:00:40

that sounds brilliant. Sophie, what about you?

Sophie Rickard: 1:00:47

If I was a high school. librarian or a high school person who is interested in, reading for pleasure and broadening things. I would recommend, a self made hero title by Rob Davis called The Motherless Oven. There are actually three books in it's a trilogy and they are off the wall. They, it's a alternate universe where it rains knives and it's about teenagers. Trying to survive in their universe.

Scarlett Rickard: 1:01:23

brilliant.

Sophie Rickard: 1:01:24

The art is beautiful. The imagination is so wild and so simply expressed that you have no one, no trouble understanding the rules of this world. And they're not at all like our own world and all, but what I really, really like about it is that he gets really under the skin of the teenage experience. And so I think that if you were going to have some books to add to your graphic novel collection that you're hoping to entice readers in with, they would be a very good,

Lucy SB: 1:01:56

So there, So it's the motherless oven.

Sophie Rickard: 1:02:00

The Motherless Oven and then is it, is it The Can Opener's Daughter and then The Book of

Scarlett Rickard: 1:02:06

Yes.

Lucy SB: 1:02:06

That, they sound amazing and exactly the sort of thing that I love. I love something that's a little bit

Scarlett Rickard: 1:02:11

Oh,

Sophie Rickard: 1:02:11

uh,

Scarlett Rickard: 1:02:12

They're really, really, good. Yeah. And I know I've said something, but I'm not sure mine's even in print. So let me say something sensible. A creator who I really like is Guy Dalil, who's done quite a lot of stuff, of travelogue. Kind of stuff. Uh, his wife worked for Médecins Sans Frontières, so, so they were going all over the world and living in sort of war zones and places. And he's done these fantastic, graphic novels about the experience of being in North Korea and in Jerusalem and in, you know, sort of exploring, you know, these places and they're very lightly done but also really interesting and really give you a sense of what it's like to to be in those places. And then he did a fantastic book called Hostage which is, based on the testimony of a man who was held hostage for A few years, I think, two or three years,

Sophie Rickard: 1:03:09

I think if you're interested in comics craft and like the medium being used, well, they are really, really good examples of that.

Scarlett Rickard: 1:03:19

And hostage is really good for people who aren't big readers because there are very few words because it's just, it's a man in a room. Um, but. But But the way that, the way that it has the sort of tension of the situation and, you know, and people speaking foreign languages that you don't understand, and it's just, it's really well done. So I recommend

Lucy SB: 1:03:43

That sounds absolutely brilliant. Well, that's a great bevy of recommendations. So thank you very much. And thank you for coming on the podcast. It's been amazing. The time's flown by and I've really loved it. So thank you. It's been lovely to meet you.

Sophie Rickard: 1:03:53

Thank you for having us.

Scarlett Rickard: 1:03:54

you.

1:03:58

The Ricard sisters that really enjoyed exploring the topic of adapting classically. Literature. Into graphic. Novel format. And all the benefits. And then really. Fascinating the way that partnership operates. I loved the idea of the ragged Trousered projects, funding, copies of the ragged Trousered philanthropist. To go into schools and libraries. I'll put all the links to Sophie and Scarlet, social media and their website as I always do in the show notes. So if you want to access any information about that, please do. And I really recommend getting hold of. Their books. They're really great read. Genuinely really enjoyed accessing books. I otherwise wouldn't have read stories that I would not have been accessed at all if they went in that format. So that was really brilliant. And thank you for those excellent recommendations. I'm not going to give a recommendation this week because I did actually go out and get a copy of the motherless oven if the record sisters recommend a book to you, my goodness, you go out and get it. And I did, and it was absolutely brilliant and it just finished it really. Really blew me away. The bear, so right. The way that the world's created it's. There's so much. I don't understand. And yet I just accept it because of the way that the story is crafted a beautiful example of, how to use light and shade in the artwork as well. Just it's, it's all, black and white illustration, that there's such dynamics within that. It's a really beautiful. But to look at two. So I'm going to w recommend that book to you, and we've got something a little bit different. Normally in this section, since we've been sponsored very lucky to be sponsored by ALCS the podcast. I've been recommended some resources from their website, but did they actually got the opportunity to speak to? Barbara Hayes from ALCSs their CEO. You talked to me a little bit more about ALCSs work. I think I've, I've done my best to describe what they do and to promote their work, but it's always great to be able to speak to. Someone from an organization about what they do and why it's important. It really does link really well into what the podcast is about supporting in the work of, writers and the importance of literature and promoting that. Great little intro from Barbara that I loved hearing about her comics reading experience as a child brilliant to have, um, some comics interests that in her reading journey too. Thank you, Barbara, for doing a much better job of explaining what LLCs do. As I said, Bob, we'll be back next week and we'll be continuing our conversation and talking a little bit about the importance of copyright and plagiarism education and how teachers and librarians can play a part in that. And what that means in the world, in which AI is here to stay and very much part of our educational futures. So really interesting discussion on that too. Thanks very much for listening today. I hope you enjoyed the episode. I love the Ricard sisters. I'm sure you will have to. If you would like to support the podcast you can do so by re-tweeting sharing on your social media platforms. Letting your colleagues know about the podcast and also by leaving reviews, five stars, please. Oh on any platform that you listened to, that all helps people who have similar interests to you to find the content of the podcast, and grow our audience base. So thank you very much for all of the work that you do to support and share. the podcast on your platforms, that's it from me today. My name is Lucy Starbuck Braidley. I'm the host and producer of comic. Boom. Thanks for listening.