Little Lit: Folklore and Fairy Tale Funnies

A treasure and a treasury!

Innovative cartoonist and renowned children's book artists from around the world have gathered to bring you the magic of fairy tales through the wonder of comics. The stories range from old favorites to new discoveries, from the profound to the silly. A treat for all ages, these picture stories unlock the enchanted door into the pleasures of books and reading!

Best Children's Books 2000 (PW)

The Pulitzer prize winning author of Maus and Maus II, Art Spiegelman was born in Stockholm, Sweden, and grew up in Rego Park, New York. He is also the co-founder/editor of RAW, the acclaimed magazine of avant-garde comix and graphics and the illustrator of the lost classic The Wild Party by Joseph Moncure March. Spiegelman's work has been published in more than sixteen languages and has appeared in The New York Times, Village Voice, and Playboy, among others. He has been a contributing editor and cover artist for The New Yorker since 1992.

Spiegelman attended the High School of Art and Design in New York City and SUNY Binghamton and received an honorary doctorate of letters from SUNY Binghamton in 1995. He began working for the Topps Gum Company in 1966, as association that lasted over twenty years. There he created novelty cards, stickers and candy products, including Garbage Candy, Wacky Packages and Garbage Pail Kids. He began producing underground comix in 1966, and in 1971 moved to San Francisco, where he lived until 1975.

His work began appearing in such publications as East Village Other, Bijou and Young Lust Comix. In 1975-76, he, along with Bill Griffith, founded Arcade, The Comic Revue. His book, Breakdowns, an anthology of his comics, was published in 1977.

Spiegelman moved back to New York City in 1975, and began doing drawing and comix for The New York Times, Village Voice and others. He became an instructor at The School of Visiual Arts from 1979-1987. In 1980, Spiegelman and his wife, Francoise Mouly, started the magazine RAW, which has over the years changed the public's perception of comics as an art form. It was in RAW that Maus was first serialized. In 1986, Pantheon Books published the first half of Maus and followed with Maus II in 1991. In 1994 he designed and illustrated the lost Prohibition Era classic by Joseph Moncure March, The Wild Party. In 1997, Spiegelman's first book for children, Open Me ... I'm a Dog was published by HarperCollins.

Art Spiegelman has received The National Book Critics Circle nomination in both 1986 and 1991, the Guggenheim fellowship in 1990, and a special Pulitzer Prize in 1992. His art has been shown in museums and gallery shows in the United States and abroad, including a 1991 show at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.

He and his wife, Francoise Mouly, live in lower Manhattan with their two children, Nadja and Dashiell.

Françoise Mouly joined The New Yorker as art editor in April 1993.

She co-founded Raw Books & Graphics in 1977, and for fifteen years published artists' monographs and the annual "Streets of Soho and Tribeca Map & Guide." Ms. Mouly has also served as the publisher, designer, and co-editor with her husband, Art Spiegelman, of the pioneering avant-garde comics anthology RAW, which launched in 1980. This is the magazine that first brought acclaim to artists such as Charles Burns, Sue Coe, Gary Panter, Chris Ware, Lorenzo Mattotti, and Xavier Mariscal. It also first published Maus, Mr. Spiegelman's Pulitzer Prize-winning comic book on the Holocaust. From 1987 to 1995 Ms. Mouly edited, designed and packaged books for Pantheon and Penguin Books.

In the past year, Ms. Mouly and Mr. Spiegelman have launched a RAW Junior division and have collaborated on an anthology of comic strip stories for children, Little Lit.

To commemorate The New Yorker's 75th anniversary, Ms. Mouly curated an exhibit of contemporary cover art at the Galleria Comunale d'Arte Moderna in Rome, and guest-curated a selection of a show at the Whilhelm-Busch Museum in Hannover, Germany.

In the fall of 2000, Abbeville will release Ms. Mouly's book, Covering the New Yorker, a compilation of over 300 timeless New Yorker covers.

Born in Paris, Françoise Mouly studied architecture at the Ecole Nationale Superieure des Beaux Arts and moved to New York in 1974. She and her husband, Art Spiegelman, live in Manhattan with their two children, Nadja and Dashiell.