Comic Boom - Comics in Education

Comic Boom - Comics in Education with Hannah Tunnicliffe and Erica Harrison

• Lucy Starbuck Braidley/Hannah Tunnicliffe/Erica Harrison • Season 6 • Episode 4

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In this episode Lucy chats to writer Hannah Tunnicliffe and illustrator Erica Harrison, creators of Detective Stanley and the Mystery at the Museum.

This episode is the first in a two part special focusing on the Flying Eye title Detective Stanley Mystery at the Museum. In this, the first episode we’ll meet the creators of the book themselves and in the second the marketing, sales and editorial team at Flying Eye to talk about the other side of bringing a book into the world.

The book is from a New Zealand based creative duo - Hannah Tunnicliffe and Erica Harrison. Hannah is an author, essayist, podcaster, speaker, and mental health advocate, she has written fiction for adults. Detective Stanley and the Mystery at the Museum is her first book for children. It’s a graphic reader with illustrations by the very talented, Erica Harrison, who also joins us for this episode. Erica is a  designer, illustrator and printmaker with decades of experience designing and illustrating children's fiction.

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


Lucy's recommendation:
Unicorn Boy by Dave Roman
Erica's recommendation:
 Myths and Monsters and Mayhem in Ancient Greece by James Davies 

Connect with Hannah and Erica:
Insta: @hannahtunnicliffe.author
Insta: @supercrafti


Follow the podcast:
Insta: @comic_boom_podcast
Twitter/X: @Lucy_Braidley
Bluesky: @comicboom.bsky.social

Contact: comicboompodcast@gmail.com

Music by John_Sib from Pixabay

Lucy SB:

Hello, Hannah and Erica, and welcome to Comic Boom.

Erica:

Hello.

Lucy SB:

Welcome to the podcast. Thank you so much for coming onto the show. first of all, I always start the podcast by asking, guests to tell us a little bit about their journey as a reader. I don't know if you were comics readers as children. Hannah, can you start us off? did your, how did you become a writer for comics? Where did that interest come from? Can you tell us a little bit about your reading diet as a child?

Hannah:

My reading diet. I love it. I didn't actually read a lot of comments, comics as a kid. I was thinking about this previously and, I think possibly because a lot of. Them seemed to be aimed at boys.

Lucy SB:

Mm.

Hannah:

and you know, you had protagonists like Tinton and Asterisk. and I think when I look back on it, I actually really liked female protagonists and I was drawn to them the most and I didn't really see a lot of them in comics and just comics in general seemed to be sort of dominated by the boys and didn't seem to be kind of a zone for me. so I think, you know, as a kid I was really into. Female protagonists whether it was like Charlotte's Web or Anna Gr Gables, babysitter's Club, famous five, that kind of thing where there were girls in the books doing cool stuff. and so for me, it wasn't until I was an adult, I was thinking back, I think my first graphic novel, was Persepolis by Marjon Satrapi, which I absolutely adored. and then I kind of devoured a lot of, Lucy nicely, uh, fun home by Alison Bechdel mouse, and got really into graphic novels. so yeah, it was a, I was a late, I was a late bloomer, a late something to the comic, and graphic novel. World. but I'd like to think that that's, not the case for, I've got three daughters and I don't think that's the case for them. A lot of them have read the graphic novels of the Babysitters Club. They've read Smile and Guts and they, they can see there's much more of a world for them. as girls in the comics space now, I think.

Lucy SB:

Yeah, I completely agree. It's, yeah, for me as well and my diet, my reading diet, now is really focused on sort of women's stories and yeah, there seems to be more like the Rayna TGA ma books you were just talking about, those kind of autobiographical real world stories. with, with female protagonists and definitely seems to have increased. Erica, how about you? What, what was

Erica:

I would say quite similar, but. Yeah, definitely female protagonist. I was obsessed with anything, Enid Blyton. So I started with the Faraway tree and read every single one of those. And then I think I moved on to Secret Seven, read every single one of those. Then Famous five, and it was Mallory Towers. So for me, that was my reading diet. I love that we're calling it that. Um, and, but my brother, was. What we would definitely call a reluctant reader, which is kind of interesting'cause that's where we're aiming our books at. And so his reading material was the Beano and the Dandy, and he couldn't really. Digest anything bigger format, longer format, or was interested in anything that looked like a book? So for my mom and dad, like those comics were a bit of a savior because my brother devoured them. Like, so he would get his weekly, B and that would keep him going for, for the week. So that was how he. Learn to love to read in his way. So I've always had comics in the house, but would never have really read them myself, but would totally have not, not really, no. But I kind of loved the characters from those comics because of his love for the, for the Beano. so more recently, comics have come into my life because of my daughter and, and possibly. My first real introduction to Flying Eye books was through her with Hilda. and so I have read and loved Hilda with Mabel and

Lucy SB:

love Hilda more than my children. I think

Erica:

I think I do too. So she absolutely loves Hilda. She loves the comic versions and she also loves now the TV show. And, she has rewatched the whole show twice now, all, all of the seasons. So, so my love for comics has now come with her and she is now obviously onto much more, kind of like wordier, lengthier graphic novels, and she gets through them so quickly. And my love for those just grows and that format and that way of selling a, telling a story. So it was really exciting to get to do that with Stanley.

Lucy SB:

Yeah. exactly. Which we are gonna come onto. I'm just gonna hold off for a

Erica:

Yes, yes, yes, yes.

Lucy SB:

though before we start talking about Stanley, which is, has been very popular in my house to say, um. talk a little bit, Erica, about your journey to becoming an illustrator and just thinking we could tie that into thinking about education and, what role did school or home as you were growing up, come come into that, you being able to see yourself in that role?'cause I think that that's something that, can be really challenging for children to see themselves, as somebody that creates books because they just appear as a item on the shelf. And you, you don't necessarily think about the people that are making them. So I'm just really interested in and how that journey

Erica:

Well, I don't think I thought about how people were making them when I. that I love to draw and I think my love for drawing probably came about around the same time that those Beano and Dandy comics were coming into my house. And at the time as well, like the Simpsons was just really kicking off. So I was drawing cartoon characters based on either comics or those cartoons. And, so I, I remember I. Started drawing characters for money at school. I would draw Simpson's characters.

Lucy SB:

of entrepreneurial

Erica:

I would,

Lucy SB:

I never did anything for money.

Erica:

don't even know how it really came about. I started drawing Simpson's characters for 20 p time. So, um, people would ask for a Homer, or a Marge, or a Lisa, or, And I would just copy. I think my brother might have been getting the collector cards for them or something. And so I would copy those in a bigger format and sell them for 20 pence. so, and then I think my love of drawing was obviously nurtured a lot at home. Like there was always lots of drawing materials and, my mom and dad weren't artists. My dad is a terrible drawer. My mom probably is better, but it wasn't like I was learning to draw from her. I had lots of how to draw books at home, so I used to copy from those. And then I had an amazing teacher, um, in the last couple of years of primary school. She joined our school and she was an Art based primary school teacher. So she had trained as an artist herself and then used loads of it in her lessons. So anything we were studying would have an element of creating something in order to learn about something. So if it was a history project, we'd do big posters that would go on the wall and like make these large kind of like diagrams or, I don't know, crowns for something historical or I, I, so I really remember her. Making the lessons fun through art. So I've, always, been nurtured I guess through, through teaching. and then at high school, I think I just suddenly realized I could, could draw and so like really draw. And so I was, I, I learned to paint and I was doing kind of. Portrait paintings and things by the time I was leaving high school. And then I studied art at a level and had two amazing art teachers. and at that point I was really going towards probably a, fine arts and thinking I was going to be a painter. And then I went and did my art foundation at Norwich School of Art and still think I was gonna be a fine artist. But I think I realized I didn't quite fit that mold. and was maybe taking things too literally, with projects and I didn't have quite the, I don't know, artistic thinking behind the projects that would get me. Where I kind of would need to go if I was to really focus on that. And I just, when, uh, at Art college you do. Kind of, they kind of rotate, what areas you study. and so at that point I started doing, graphic arts for the first time. And I, it wasn't anything that I had even realized was a thing until Art Foundation and for one of those graphic art projects and illustrator and uh, paper engineer came and did a project with us called Robert Crowder. And he does these amazing, A, b, c, children's popup books and he set us a project, I think it was a two week project, art school to create these, paper engineered, children's Illustrated, spreads, and kind of something clicked then that was like I could draw and I. Draw for children and I'm good at it and I could, it could maybe be a job without realizing that there ever was one until then the end of the project, like, He kind of like assessed what we'd done and brought up some of the pieces, and he showcased my piece that I'd done that week and I will never forget it. he, he said to the class that he had no doubt that at some point in my life I would draw for children for a living so that was an amazing boost and it was then that I realized that I should move from thinking about fine arts and studying graphic arts. So I did graphic arts at Leeds Metropolitan University and I specialized in children's illustration from the moment I got there and learned to book bind and learnt typography and, Came out knowing that I wanted to be a children's book designer and illustrator, but still not really realizing that that could be a job. but hoping it was. And then, at the end of my course, I started reading the ads in The Guardian. Like there used to be a big thing at that point. It used to be a supplement thing that came out on a Tuesday. That told you all the creative jobs in the industry and I applied for, two jobs. Didn't get the first one, but did get my second, which was, children's Book Designer Osborne Publishing. So that was the start of my career. And even then, I still didn't realize that I, I was like, oh, I wonder what I'll be doing there. Maybe they'll get me doing some photocopying or, you know, like just helping out. And like within my first week, I'm kind of making. Things for a fairy make and do book out and toilet rolls and boxes and glitter and, so yeah, that was. It was an, yeah, it was an incredible job. I, I, it exists and that is actually a thing. You can go into a place of work, a serious office in London and there will be somebody at a desk somewhere making bits and pieces out of stuff you can find around the home. So yeah, that was how my. I got into it, but I wouldn't have known like why, who would think that that's a job. So it's kind of just like a series of events that took me there and I was incredibly lucky to get that job.

Lucy SB:

It sounds like there's been some Really inspirational people along the way as well, which has been, that's really nice to hear that and just to know that because it's the sort of thing that you at, like when you are leading a class, you don't really realize the things that you say or the validation that you give people and the impact it can have. It's

Erica:

Yeah, amazingly so that that one comment changed the course of my art career. I think really it made me realize that what I was good at wasn't what I realized I was good at until somebody told me. So, yeah, it was important.

Lucy SB:

And Hannah, what about you in writing? Was, was being a writer something that you visualized as a child

Hannah:

I mean, I'm still just, I'm just trying to get over, Erica's 20 p per Simpson's illustration.

Lucy SB:

Were you writing stories for people

Hannah:

I,

Lucy SB:

because if you're not, if you weren't.

Hannah:

I just wished Erica, that we'd known each other as kids.'cause I feel like we really could have.

Erica:

Who knows what we could have done. Right.

Hannah:

you know? Um, together imagine, 50 p maybe. anyway. No, I, I, I always say to people that I feel like the idea of being a writer as a profession, I completely agree with Erica. I don't think I fully. Grasped it as a possibility. Obviously I knew people did do it, but that didn't mean that people like me could do it. and I knew that I could write, but it also felt kind of slightly, this is gonna sound odd, I think, but sort of slightly dangerous as in, If I tried to, it was sort of like the last trick in the bag. So I studied human resources and organizational psychology, and I had a corporate career, because that's the sort of thing that normal people do. and it means that you can make money and, you know, have a family and blah, blah, blah. so yeah, to write felt like the last trick in the bag If I tried to write properly, and I, and I failed. Then I, it was like that I'd used up all my possibly secret talents I was depleted and that would be it. And it just felt a bit scary actually to kind of properly, think about writing as a job and actually properly exploring it.'cause there is, and I'm sure Erica would attest to this too, there's such vulnerability in actually putting your creative work out there for judgment and assessment and, you know, is it. was it not? And so writing sort of fell into my lap in a way because I had resigned from a job, in human resources. So I was the HR director for a massive business in Macau, China. And I'd resigned from that job. And the only other kind of work I could realistically get was HR human resources work, and another. Similar company. I didn't take that option and I just started to write as a personal project. and that manuscript that I ended up writing became, the first novel I had published, which was The Color of Tea, but by Pan Macmillan. So it was just, yeah, a series of fortunate events I guess that led to that. and probably the. that I didn't have very many other options, if I wanted to exit the human resources world. And fact that it was kind of a whim felt like a little bit less pressure. yeah. So I think I sort of tricked myself into it slightly.

Lucy SB:

Yeah, it's hard to, when you've built up a career be in a really senior role, must be hard to step away from that to visualize yourself as something so completely different.

Hannah:

Yeah, I mean, I think in, I think it, it's a full circle back to being much more the kind of person I was as a kid. So I think that the corporate career was more of a, more of a diversion from my authentic self. So to come back to it feels great, although as I say, like it is vulnerable and it is hard and it doesn't pay much and it's quite a slog and all of those things, but the content of the work. Feels very aligned. and then in terms of kids books or writing for children, the first time I had a go at that was with an orphanage that was based in Macau where I was living, and they had an origin story that I thought would be amazing as a picture book. And so, so that's something that I worked on. And it wasn't. And that book was self-published and it was used as a fundraising tool and a gift to donors who donated to, cradle of Hope, which is the name of the orphanage. And then, um, yeah, it wasn't really until I. Erica and I for fortuitously met at the school gate, that we, that I started thinking about sort of writing for kids. yeah, it just sort of all came together. So I dunno if you know that story very well. Do you know that story very well about how Erica and I started to.

Lucy SB:

and that just super excited me because frequently when writers and illustrators are on the podcast, it is the first time they've ever met. and so at which blows my

Erica:

Seriously. But I guess'cause if it's a publisher that's put them together. Yeah.

Lucy SB:

they, they've never actually like had a conversation. So I love, this is very exciting that you know

Erica:

Yeah, it is.

Lucy SB:

tell me.

Hannah:

Yeah, no, unfortunately Erica knows me very, very well and sees me all the time. Poor Erica.

Erica:

Yeah. Not unfortunately at all. I think it's what makes what we do works so well. Like, and I think our book is testament to that. I mean, it could have gone totally the other way. Like, I dunno, it could have been the worst book ever,

Lucy SB:

A

Hannah:

Yeah.

Erica:

but it was, I don't think it's, anyway, you, you say the beginning, you, you explained the beginnings'cause it was yours to start with. Hannah.

Hannah:

Okay, I'll start. I'll start and

Erica:

Yeah.

Hannah:

gonna pass over to

Erica:

Okay. Yeah, I'm ready.

Hannah:

is, this is how we work, Lucy. We just, this is, we're a team. so when I was, I was down, I was having, I was holidaying somewhere, holidaying down in Queenstown, which is in the south island of New Zealand, and I saw this. Pack. It was like a spy adventure for kids that they could take around Queenstown and solve the clues and kind of a fam little family adventure. I thought, that's so cool. We could do something like that in the suburb where we live, the neighborhood where we live, which is Davenport, and we could use a lot of the historical buildings and information that's. You know, it's quite an old, well for New Zealand, it's an old village. And we could do it as a fundraising project for, the primary school where my daughters go to school. so designed this thing, and was trying to find somebody to work on it with me as an illustrator and designer. And Erica had very stupidly, um, illustrated another fundraising project for the primary school. And so of course I saw it and got really excited and stalked her mercilessly and figured out like who she was and like where she lived and you know, the names of your ex-boyfriends and whatnot. And, um. Yeah. Got in touch and said, do you wanna get involved in this? And I had this idea of family trail, all very lo-fi and Erica completely elevated the whole thing because she said with her background at Osborne, she said, what if we make it trail around Davenport and an activity book, we could also put an A three map. So the product by the end was the most beautiful, is the most beautiful. You can still purchase it. Product with an A three map of the village with the walking trail on it. A sealed section for the answer to the whole mystery. It's called the Great Davenport History Mystery. and a little branded pencil in the package as well. All sort of cell wrapped. It is absolutely gorgeous. and as part of that, Erica designed this little detective dog character.

Erica:

Well, I should interject just there to say it was originally a cat. Can you imagine it would've been a totally different story. So, um, the cat quite quickly became a dog because I was like, of course it's gotta be a dog. He sniffs out the clues.

Lucy SB:

better than cats

Erica:

Mm.

Hannah:

agree.

Erica:

Yeah, I am afraid you're talking to a cat owner.

Hannah:

I on your side.

Erica:

So yeah, he, he became Detective Stanley. So he is the protagonist of the Davenport History Mystery. And at that point he had a little sidekick of a AKA Waka, which is a little New Zealand bird with a fan tail. And he, they flit about, and they're absolutely. Gorgeous. And he had this little, I guess he was like Watson at that point. He had a little bowler hat, this bird. And those two characters were the guys that took you around the trail of the history mystery of Davenport. And yeah. I interrupted your story. Did you have something else to add, Hannah, before I take it over?

Hannah:

no, I was, I was gonna pass over to you to say,

Erica:

Yeah,

Hannah:

what happened next.

Erica:

well what happened next was. We love working on that so much. And it came, it turned out so nicely. It had real vintage, vibe. Uh, we, I used a very limited color palette. Stanley was all yellow, black and white. And so the whole thing just looks like sort of an activity book of, I dunno, the fifties or something, which is, it kind of felt like it fitted that sort of mystery, detective novel of that genre. and we love working on that so much that I was like, well, should we keep going? Why don't we take this character and make a bigger activity book and we'll think about self-publishing ourselves. or, or thinking about what we're gonna do once we've got a bit more of a product. So, we decided to stick with the theme cause we worked with the Davenport, museum to kind of get our facts for the. History. History, um, we were like, well, let's go a bit bigger. Why don't we talk to the Auckland Museum and see what we can find out there? So we went and met with the conservative team at the Auckland Museum and went behind the scenes and found out about how they preserve bugs and what special glues they use. And we got all very, very excited about that. And so we started the same process of how we. Created the, history mystery, with the idea that we would have, a series of clues that would lead the child all the way through the book. And unless you answered all of the questions, you wouldn't be able to get. Your answer because each page would unveil a letter which would spell out a secret clue at the end, and it was gonna have a sealed section again. And the idea was that it kind of makes like activity books, sort of, you, you want to achieve it all rather than just dipping in and maybe like doing one page and then giving up on it. It was supposed to be an incentive to go all the way through the book. So we started that and we'd got, we'd gotten a fairway in probably a quarter of the way through the book with a whole book plan set out. And it's like, I feel like we've got enough now. We had enough of the book mapped out. I'd done about three or four color spreads. I had a cover for it. so it was called Detective Stanley and the Mystery at the Museum, and I said to Hannah. Oh, we, we'd actually gone down the road of thinking about how we could self-publish and realized it was just gonna be way too hard and probably for not much gain and um, especially not if we were to just publish here in New Zealand.'cause we were a small market. So I, we had all of this beautiful content. So it sat for a couple of weeks just thinking, oh, we've made all this now what we're gonna do. And then I just thought, well, you know what I mean? I stalk all of the publishers all the time anyway, the ones that I really like and I I love flying iBooks and I love their aesthetic and I love the illustrators that they use and how cool the stories are and, and I was like, I mean, this is dream. This would be dream scenario, but don't get your hopes up, Hannah, because it's probably not likely, but why don't we do it because we've got this. So let's go for it. So we put together, a kind of a pitch for our book and included all, everything that we had and, sent it off. And then I got a very, this is nighttime, New Zealand time. So then we go to bed and then I get a, a very excited text message from Hannah the next morning going, they.

Lucy SB:

The next day. Wow.

Erica:

I was like, what? I hadn't even looked at my emails yet. Whatcha talking about? And Sam had gotten back to us

Hannah:

actually. I was just like at her window. Good morning.

Erica:

up yet desperate, waiting for me to respond. Um, and. Sam Arthur at Flying Eye had gotten back to us and he was, it was all a series of coincidences. I think they'd apparently had, an acquisitions meeting just earlier that week where they'd had a discussion about how they didn't have a detective and they needed a detective for the.

Lucy SB:

the one landed, landed in their.

Erica:

He handed in their inbox and and he said, look, it's great, kind of like what you've done, but Flying eye do not do activity books. It's not something we publish. It's not something we specialize in marketing or anything. So, um, it's not something we would take as it is, but we're really interested in his character. Do you think you could turn it into a story, specifically for our. Younger kind of graphic novel series, which they call graphic readers, for six to nine year olds. here's some other stuff we've done. Do you wanna give it a go? And, uh, we said, yes. That sounds great. And he's like another email back. Can you do it in about three weeks? So it reaches our next acquisitions meeting. Okay. And in the background, me, Hannah, can you write a book in. And

Lucy SB:

And can you write

Erica:

she can write a book in three weeks, I think. No, no, no, no, no. I,

Hannah:

pressure. Yes. It

Erica:

she wrote, I think she wrote a book in a week and a half actually, because I had then the other week and a half to put together something, for it. Like I think we had to do something. Did we have to do like 12 roughs and like a whole page, a whole a page plan for the whole book? Roughs and a couple of color, three color spreads. Could we do that in three? I think it might have been nearly four, but it was definitely not long. And we did it and we sent that off and they liked it. And so that's how Detective Stanley became, not just a little village detective anymore. He became a London detective, a world detective.

Lucy SB:

that's brilliant. I love that story. for people who dunno, Hannah, can you just introduce the book, give a little bit of a synopsis of the story? My children really loved it. It's been very popular in my house. But can you, can you listeners a bit of an intro?

Hannah:

I would love to. yeah, I think as Erica said, it was really exciting for us to be considering a graphic reader, which I had didn't really fully understand until we kind of came into this world.

Lucy SB:

Mm.

Hannah:

I. How unique they are and how great they are for such a wide range of kids. in terms of ages and in terms of interest in reading, because you do have the story as well as comic dialogue. So com in comics, obviously the whole story is told through dialogue and through the, the, the images. Whereas with a graphic reader, you do have a story, like a picture book. You do have some text above and below. sort of comic sections as well. So it's a, it's a really, really nice blend and I think it's so accessible for so many different types of kids. So the first thing I would say is, um, like Erica said, detective Stanley and the mystery at the museum is great for kids anywhere. Sort of, I think between sort of five to 10 because. Kids can read it. and it feels like a step up from picture books, but kids can also be read too, if they're at that age as well. So yeah, it's about a crime solving sleuth hound. So that's our Detective Stanley. He is desperately trying to retire and enjoy pancake breakfasts, but he keeps,

Lucy SB:

are trying to retire, aren't they? Is it?

Hannah:

yes, they're all trying to retire. It is a, an occupational hazard that they try to retire and somebody's always dragging them back in. so poor Stanley is trying to retire Anita's Pancake breakfast and he gets interrupted, by a mystery to solve at the local, gnarly Bone Museum. So it's, it includes a very perplexing art heist where there doesn't seem to be anything stolen, but actually there might be something stolen. some disguises, forgery, and also some wrongful imprisonment. and at the back of the book, there are some art facts to enjoy and loads of Aha. Christie Sherlock Holmes references throughout. and what we really hoped to. Give readers, sort of adult buyers and child readers, was this kind of almost vintage, like you feel as though it should have been written before because there's so many kind of tropes and cliches.

Lucy SB:

Yeah,

Hannah:

but it fits into that.

Lucy SB:

of it.

Hannah:

Yeah. It fits into that sort of literary legacy of, you know, old fashioned mystery stories. whether it's Puo or Sherlock Holmes or. Nancy Drew, or even famous five like Erica was talking about, you know, us growing up with it fits into that and kind of builds on that, heritage and the look of it is very nostalgic as well. so yeah, we, we are very conscious that we have multiple audiences. We've got the kids who read it, we've got the parents who buy it. We've got the teachers who engage with it and the librarians. And so we, we really wanted to give something to. All of those audiences that was like fun and warm and engaging.

Lucy SB:

Yeah, I definitely think so. I know, so one of the, features of one of the ways in which reading for pleasure can, manifest in children or, and adults is the same in humans, of any age. is the, the pleasure of that kind of intellectual pleasure of like solving a problem And that's what people get from mysteries. And definitely I observed my children and also felt myself like when, when, because you, there's an opportunity for you to be slightly ahead of Stanley isn't there? As you're, as you're reading it, you can see things, you can see the, the clues and, and that, that kind of pleasure of, of being slightly smarter than Stanley. although he's obviously very clever. Um,

Erica:

Obviously,

Lucy SB:

honestly.

Hannah:

I think you're right. I think it's that pantomime thing too, where it's like he's behind you.

Erica:

yeah.

Hannah:

enjoy that. You know, there's no age that doesn't enjoy that, I don't think.

Erica:

Yeah. And since it's been out here, because it's only just come out, in New Zealand a few weeks ago, so we've had our book launch this week for it. And so we've had lots of new readers, with parents that we might know or. Through other parents. We've had feedback and I've had some lovely videos sent of me of children's reactions to different things on the pages. Like for example, the, there's a prison scene where you kind of get a cross section of all the little animals in their cells and what they're up to. On the prior page there were, there was an escapee, a little wolf has escaped out of. A window and one of my friend's daughters was just delighted that when she turned up, she'd seen the wolf climbing outta the window and when she turned the next page, she discovered the window of which he'd broken out. So it, it's those little things that I just sort of like had just, well, that, that seemed obvious to me, but has caused like real delight in the reader. And I think what's also nice is children are going back and then rereading it again. And because you can unravel some things. Some clues earlier on if you hadn't already caught them. Now, when you read it a second time and you spot those things, the child is so delighted they feel like a detective themselves, so that you know, oh, I didn't notice that the first time. And look, we could have, we could have worked out the case sooner if we'd have seen this. So yeah, it's really nice.

Lucy SB:

That's brilliant. And how did it work between, so you, after you did this, um, mad three week hustle to get,

Erica:

Yeah.

Lucy SB:

to get the first deadline, then when you, presumably you had a little bit more time, and as you were already working on this really collaboratively and it's, was it less, you know, typically with people I've spoken to, it's kind of like the, the book's written and then it goes, and then, and then the illustrations are done where you a lot more in communication

Erica:

definitely. Yeah, definitely.

Lucy SB:

How did it kind of work?

Erica:

well with the, it, it's evolved because with the first one, Hannah just wrote the. It was amazing. Like I was just blown away.'cause I could feel, I could see in my head how it was gonna work already. So I got very excited about it. I could start to imagine how it might work. And, and for me, this is the first sort of comic book type book I've ever created. So I, I wasn't quite sure in my head how we were gonna tackle those bits where we needed text and then. Like intro texts and then speech bubbles. Hannah had mapped it out how she thought it could work, but it was like a case of sort of getting inside Hannah's head to get inside my own head to figure out how that would work on a page. so it was a case of, I, I think I just then dealt with it like I would any book that I'm given from an, an editor and told to lay out like my job as book designer just kicked in and, um.

Lucy SB:

Hmm.

Erica:

Figured out how Hannah's work words would work across 64 pages, because I don't think you'd broken it down on that first one, had you? I don't think at that point you were like thinking this page could have this on. I think you'd written it as a story. I.

Hannah:

put. I wrote, I wrote, I remember writing it as a story, but then I remember breaking it down into kind of what it could look like. And then I gave Erica this really horrible document where I had actually drawn, like, here's a panel and da, da da, and this is a mouse. And like, it was just hideous, you know? Um, but it was like on the page at least kind of. And, and, and like Erica said, that has evolved the second one that we have written. it's almost kind of in the bag. I created a, a table where I had, this is the speech that goes on the page. This is the speech that goes in the dialogue bubbles. This is what I'm thinking of for the page, you know, whether it's three panels or it's, and then as you said, Lucy, it's so collaborative and it, we just bounce backwards and forwards with each other. Erica's uh, husband's got a background in advertising, so he's also can be really useful in terms of imagining things as storyboards. And having that sort of visual overview. and yeah, we just kind of keep, keep going until it working, you know, or we'll try things and then go, that's not working.

Erica:

Yeah.

Hannah:

So it was really important for us that, we, yeah, we did, we, we worked on everything together and we go backwards and forwards. We do absolutely have our own skillset, which is great. And I just so admire Erica's work. so there's this real like, mutual respect and somehow we have this. shared vision is just aligned. It's crazy actually. Sometimes it's like, oh yeah, you know, like we, the other day we were talking about the kind of animal that one of the villains should be, I was saying to a friend of mine, I was like, God, we had the funniest conversation about do you think they should be mice? I don't know what do, what about weasels? You know? And we were just, and I was like, this is the best work conversation ever. I was just having the absolute time of my life. Um,

Erica:

And we're also good at taking criticism from each other. Not that of, we often have to do it because I think we just both respect that each person has what their. Skillset is, and so you trust them with it and you run with it. But equally like I'll send stuff over to Hannah and go, do you think this is working? Like does be honest, is there anything you would change? And I want her to, and she does tell me when things. And then I take that criticism and we'll make it into something better. And I think it's really important to be able to do that because that's what makes the work good. so yeah, it's not being you, you can't be shy about saying something doesn't work.

Hannah:

Yeah, I totally agree. I think what. Makes it work so well, is that I know for sure, and I think Erica knows for sure too, that our intention is to make it as good as it can be. So it's not, it's not cri, it's criticism only for the sake of betterment. Like, and we are both, we love kids' books so much, and we love graphic readers and graphic novels so much that we want it to be like the best it can be. And we're so driven by that. so yeah, it's, it's always delivered. Received knowing that intention.

Lucy SB:

Yeah. There's also a lot of trust there.

Erica:

It doesn't have to happen very often though. I honestly, but Hannah's writing just comes in and I go, yep. Nailed it. And then I think most of the time I get it right back. So it's um, yeah.

Hannah:

You do. And it is like we're saying this kind of shared vision of it. It's like, yeah, that, that's what I was seeing in my mind. It's great.

Lucy SB:

That's brilliant. And in terms of the visual style, is that very similar to that original

Erica:

it is really, it's really,

Lucy SB:

How did you settle on that? It seems it's really distinctive. I think

Erica:

yeah, I was gonna try and get it, not that it would work very well for a podcast for me to show you a cover, but, um. Yeah, it hasn't strayed too far away from that. Apart from it obviously went more colorful.'cause I was working in a very limited color palette. what has changed is that he was, I mean he's very 2D anyway. It's a very flat world. Um, but he was even flatter before because I'd never ever seen him from not this angle, like it was just an eye. But I'm doing side profile. It.

Lucy SB:

Yeah.

Erica:

So just an eye on his little snout and, he can't always be sideways, can he? So then I had to figure out how to draw him from the front when he looked very strange to start with because taking that 2D flatness and then figuring out, well, what's he gonna look like when you can see bow eyes and his nose straight on, and what's his hat gonna look like? So it took, a few attempts to kind of like figure out his. How he works in a more 3D world, even though he is still very flat. So he, he hasn't, he hasn't changed much. His, his outfit is exactly the same. He still wears his little yellow stripe trousers and his dear stalker hat and his little cape and his little dress shoes, always looks impeccable. and then as for the rest of the world, it. It was a bit of back and forth with flying Eye at the beginning to just get that right because I'd use it kind of like more, of a retro kind of dotty texture on him for the history mystery. Um, and that's all gone in book and it just relies on the kind of, its pure color and the beautiful texture of the paper. so it was kind of advice to sort of like steer to away a little bit from using textures'cause it's really not required. It's gonna look amazing once it's on paper. So it was kind of working with them to make sure I got the color palette right and my color palette right from the beginning was always, it was thinking of things like, Wes Anderson, color palettes were just, it just. Felt right. And those kind of cross section sort of views of things that we get are very much inspired by his films. And then, Paddington too, all of the prisons, my favorite movie. Um, all of the prison scenes in that are like with rarely good inspiration for like how the,

Lucy SB:

live, so I live in the town where padding the creator of Patton was born and we just had our statues stolen. It's been

Erica:

I saw that.

Lucy SB:

not sure if it's reached your shortes.

Erica:

saw that. I was shocked. They ripped the front of Paddington bear off.

Lucy SB:

They ripped people were leaving. they had like a little CSI tent over the bench when his statue was stolen. And, people left marmalade and marmalades sandwiches on the bench for weeks until he came back.

Erica:

Oh no. But is he back now? Is he back in place? They fixed him.

Lucy SB:

he's just last week to tell you

Erica:

Paddington is back.

Lucy SB:

was returned it was, and because the judge, and when the people were sentenced to it, these drunk two drunken people from the RF, they, the judge said that their behavior was the antithesis of everything Paddington stood

Erica:

Not completely. I mean, it was shocking.

Hannah:

right now. This.

Lucy SB:

Yeah, well the people of Newbury have been shook to their

Erica:

I.

Lucy SB:

by

Hannah:

fair enough too.

Lucy SB:

his back

Hannah:

I

Erica:

Oh, I'm glad he is back.

Lucy SB:

to

Hannah:

that's like your mom saying, I'm very disappointed in you. It's like this is the antithesis of everything. Paddington stands for,

Lucy SB:

Yeah, exactly. so I've just got a few more questions before we wrap up. but Erica, I wanted to talk to you because we're talking about the kind of journey of a book and there are roles which I don't really understand in publishing.

Erica:

I still don't.

Lucy SB:

designer is one of them. So, and I know when I was speaking to the team at Flying Eye, they were saying that it was quite unusual for an illustrator to also be. The book designer on a project, so I just,

Erica:

Yeah, I,

Lucy SB:

explain that, what that means?

Erica:

I didn't really know that, but that's because that's always been, I was a designer first before I was an illustrator. So the two kind of just go hand in hand for me. And when I was working at Osborne, I was often working on titles, the activity book type titles, where I would design and put them together and work collaboratively with other illustrators as well. So it'd be designing for them, but then there would be spreads that I would just illustrate myself. So in my head, a kind of like how things end up on the page. Always start with where the words will go or, or how they will be laid out and making sure. That it is really super readable. Like you, the text needs to be in the right place, otherwise the reader won't understand what they're doing or where they should be going.

Lucy SB:

with younger readers, where they're just really learning how to navigate that

Erica:

Yeah, so it's really important that words start up in the top left corner and they really gradually work down the page. And if they're gonna end up in the bottom right, it's got to be sequentially sunk that constantly hop backwards because otherwise you won't know where to go. So for me, that was all part of like, how I was gonna figure out the illustrations was, uh, the words were put on the page first, so, so that we could make sure between me and Hannah, like even before there were pictures on the page, the words and the speech bubbles went on the page. So we could see that the leading text into those speech bubbles would work, that the characters having those conversations would work. and that the story would, would make sense so that all came before the characters even ended up on the page, and that then made it easier for me to figure out how many frames I might use. Per like trying to tell the story. There aren't too many in like, whereas in maybe a normal comic book, you might suddenly get these, um, frame after frame of no, um, text and you're just sort of led to kind of like what's happening in the story through the image. But I think because these are. For younger readers and because we are gonna assume that they may be being read to first with them, I know reading those comic books with my daughter, that actually it's very hard to read something that's maybe only got sound effects or nothing going on. You have to then describe the picture to then sort of describe for it to make sense with the words that follow. So, um, we had to kind of make sure that we didn't have too many frames on each page. To make sure young readers would understand it and that we were always maybe partly explaining what was in that image, even if sometimes it's probably quite obvious, but just so that it, it told the story in a nice, fluid way. I can't really imagine the other way round where it's sort of like designed for somebody and then just given to you as the illustrator, especially if the illustrator sort of had the concept for the whole book. I'm interested to know how it works in their head. I only know my way, which is I guess the designer in me do everything. Yeah,

Hannah:

everything. Is Erica's way.

Erica:

micromanage every single element.

Lucy SB:

Complete control. It's really interesting for me to find out all of this. and then kind of. Go back and think about how, so to find out about the way that it worked and how collaborative it was. And now I, I wanna go back and read it again now and see if like, you know, with that knowledge and see, you know, kind of almost imagine the decisions that you've made along the way. So I'll definitely be doing that after we've finished recording, go back and look at it again with fresh eyes, thinking of you two, um, working an eye on it. So I think you've kind of hinted, but are we gonna see more Detective Stanley books in the future? I think you said you've already got one done

Hannah:

Yeah, absolutely. There are, we have a three book deal with Flying Eye. The second book is done. The third book is

Erica:

Not done,

Hannah:

mapped. yeah, not done. It's not done. Um, we, um,

Erica:

but we know what it is.

Hannah:

cover for it, and we do know the sort of trajectory of the story,

Erica:

I'm excited about it.

Hannah:

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Lucy SB:

Amazing.

Hannah:

it too.

Erica:

Yeah, yeah.

Hannah:

so yeah, it's great because I just, yeah, he's just, he's just not made for just one book. He's.

Erica:

he could just keep going. He just can't retire.

Hannah:

he can't retire.

Erica:

the next one is called Detective Stanley and the Green Thumb Thief, and it's set at the nar, bone Botanical Gardens. And a very special precious plant may or may not have gone missing. So it's all based, so Stanley's called in again to go and sort it out. so that one's was, I would say really fun to illustrate, but I dunno if it was, I had to draw so many plants. So, so many plants.

Lucy SB:

You need to agree these things. At the right, you've got no excuse.

Erica:

a greenhouse.

Lucy SB:

you've made your own problems.

Hannah:

It's, this is the other great thing about having this collaboration. There was, I think there was something, some character, anyway, I think it was like, I think this character should be an ex animal. And Erica was like, I'm not gonna keep drawing that animal. No, I'm, I said, okay, well, we'll just change it. We'll make it a

Erica:

Yeah.

Hannah:

whatever it was. And

Erica:

I dunno why I have particular, yeah. Aversions to some animals and not others. But it might be just be because I'm like, I don't think I can draw them.

Hannah:

Yeah, exactly.

Erica:

But then I've had to draw some very odd animals for the, for these books that I've probably never drawn before. So, and yeah, you learn to draw them.

Hannah:

We can sort of help make life a little bit easier for each other, I think, which is nice. But yes, more Detective Stanley to come. A hundred percent.

Lucy SB:

exciting. I think he, he's also lends himself to merch. I wanna

Erica:

Yeah, me too.

Lucy SB:

range of merch.

Erica:

Me too.

Hannah:

Yeah.

Lucy SB:

let's get that sorted please.

Hannah:

Excellent.

Lucy SB:

okay, so the final question on the podcast is always if, listeners were to add one comic or book book about comics, if you like, um, to our two B red piles tomorrow, what would you recommend we read? Something that you've read recently that you've enjoyed, that you'd

Erica:

I have got, it's not a, graphic novel as such, but it's in that, I'm gonna hold it up'cause I've got it right here. It's called Myths and Monsters and Mayhem. Ancient Greece. So it's a nonfiction book by James Davies by Big Picture Press. And I love it. having just watched, chaos on Netflix with all the Greek, this was actually, I went back to this after that because it explained it all because it's all of the, Greek stories in comic book format and there are only a couple of pages, each one, but it's so well done and the illustrations are just. Incredible. So I think it fits in that comic world, even though it's a nonfiction book. So, yeah, that's my recommendation.

Lucy SB:

Excellent. Hannah, have you got one for us?

Hannah:

Oh, I just, I think that listeners should absolutely rush out and buy Detective Stanley, the mystery of the museum.

Lucy SB:

Of course, of

Erica:

Excellent. Plug, Hannah.

Hannah:

yeah, what can I say? Just, you know, the best of the best.

Lucy SB:

Yeah. I would second that. I think it's really, beautifully produced. a really distinctive look and to when you read it as well, like that story. Um, so yeah, I would definitely, and I think it does, like, that feels like really important gap in this transition, time of reading as well.

Erica:

I think it's um, quite exciting, isn't it?'cause it fits what Everybody's telling us that children's reading is, is not where it should be, and that, in order to get more children, reading books need to be shorter and more engaging. And I just think this series of books is like so spot on. It's, it's got a bit of everything and it's gonna, you know, be perfect for those children that are maybe struggling a bit with their reading or, or they're not. And they just wanna look at something that looks really cool. Um, but I think it's that shorter format. Comic is really accessible.

Lucy SB:

Yeah,

Hannah:

agree. I just think, and it's just such an exciting time and what a great to be able to access in these times of. Confusion and strife and the world gone slightly bad

Lucy SB:

Mm.

Hannah:

able to dive into these worlds.

Lucy SB:

Lose yourself in a story.

Erica:

Yeah.

Lucy SB:

What a brilliant note to end on. Thank you so much. Thanks for giving up your time, talking to me. And thanks for making this brilliant book.

Erica:

Thank you.

Hannah:

you.

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Lucy Starbuck Braidley

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