Sambro / Ketch Harbour
I had my first visit of the year through the Writers in the Schools program last week. It was a half day at Sambro/Ketch Harbour school, right outside of Halifax.
What a fabulous visit. A tip of the hat to Nicole, for organizing the whole thing, and to the teachers, who made sure their kids knew all about Daisy Dreamer before I got there. And to the Grade 5/6 kids: I loved the comics that you made. Peeling eyeballs? Ewww!
Daisy Dreamer around the world
One of my kids said something interesting a few weeks ago. He said that Daisy Dreamer used to ride ponies, and now she fights evil robots in Japan. (She fights the robot in the November issue of
Chickadee magazine, and I encourage you to pick it up and take a look at Gabriel Morrissette's great artwork.)
I laughed, but at the same time I realized he was right -- something important has changed about the comic. When Daisy went to space five years ago, in the January 2001 issue, I think, it was one of the first times that she did something really extraordinary (besides turning into animals, of course). Most of the time, Daisy was a pretty normal nine-year-old, except she had a magic power.
Over the years, it seems like Daisy's been spending more and more time in exciting locations, and in action-filled stories. She's stopped turtle poachers in India, protected one of the pyramids from a grave robber, saved a famous piece of art that was stolen from the Louvre museum in Paris, and searched for treasure buried by pirates.
Sometimes I like the idea of doing normal-kid stories: Daisy at home, or at school with her friends. But there are other comics that do that well (like "Chick and Dee"). Besides, Daisy is a fantasy comic, so we're spending a lot less time worrying about details (like why are these kids in a market in Morocco) and more on the action.
So look for Daisy in all kinds of neat places the next few months. And if you ever have ideas of places you want her to go, or animals you want her to turn into, click
here and let me know!
Fiction!
I've just finished writing (and rewriting) my first piece of kids' prose fiction. (I'm not counting Daisy Dreamer, of course, since it's a comic.) Very cool, and great artwork too. Look for it in January/February 2007 -- which is a lot sooner than you would think.
Gotta love those PDFs
You know, I used to tell people that after I finished my Daisy Dreamer script for the month, I would have no idea what the finished comic was going to look like. Several months later, it would arrive in my mailbox, and that was the first time I would see it.
No more!
Thanks to PDF files, I now regularly get to see the comics before they go to print. This is fun, and it also helps work out any little problems that might exist between the artwork and the text (something that almost never happens -- but it can).
Still, there's nothing quite like getting my hands on the paper copy, printed in the magazine, when it comes out. Even after six years, it's still a thrill.