Jules Feiffer has won a number of prizes for his cartoons, plays,
and screenplays, including the Pulitzer Prize for editorial
cartooning. His books for children include The Man in the Ceiling;
A Barrel of Laughs, A Vale of Tears; I Lost My Bear; Bark, George;
and Meanwhile... He lives in Richfield Springs, New York.
In His Own Words...
"I have been writing and drawing comic strips all my life, first as
a six-year-old, when I'd try to draw like my heroes: Alex Raymond,
who did Flash Gordon, E. C. Segar, who did Popeye, Milton Caniff,
who did Terry and the Pirates. The newspaper strip back in the
1940s was a glorious thing to behold. Sunday pages were full-sized
and colored broadsheets that created a universe that could swallow
a boy whole.
"I was desperate to be a cartoonist. One of my heroes was Will
Eisner, who did a weekly comic book supplement to the Sunday
comics. One day I walked into his office and showed him my samples.
He said they were lousy, but he hired me anyway. And I began my
apprenticeship.
"Later I was drafted out of Eisner's office into the Korean War.
Militarism, regimentation, and mindless authority combined to
squeeze the boy cartoonist out of me and bring out the rebel. There
was no format at the time to fit the work I raged and screamed to
do, so I had to invent one. Cartoon satire that commented on the
military, the bomb, the cold war, the hypocrisy of grown-ups, the
mating habits of urban young men and women: These were my subjects.
After four years of trying to break into print and getting nowhere,
the Village Voice, the first alternative newspaper, offered to
publish me. Only one catch: They couldn't pay me. What did I
care?
"My weekly satirical strip, Sick Sick Sick, later renamed Feiffer,
started appearing in late 1956. Two years later, Sick Sick Sick
came out in book form and became a bestseller. The following years
saw a string of cartoon collections, syndication, stage and screen
adaptations of the cartoon. One, Munro, won an Academy Award.
"This was heady stuff, taking me miles beyond my boyhood dreams.
The only thing that got in the way of my enjoying it was the real
world: the Cuban missile crisis, the assassination of President
Kennedy, the Vietnam War, the civil rights revolution. The country
was coming unglued, and my weekly cartoons didn't seem to be an
adequate way of handling it. So I started writing plays: Little
Murders, The White House Murder Case, Carnal Knowledge, Grown Ups.
All the themes of my comic strips expanded theatrically and, later,
cinematically to give me the time and space I needed to explain the
times to myself and to my audience.
"I grew older. I had a family and, late in life, a very young
family. I started thinking, as old guys will, about what I wanted
these children to read, to learn. I read them E. B. White and
Beverly Cleary and Roald Dahl, and, one day, I thought, Hey, I can
do this."
"Writing for young readers connects me professionally to a part of
myself that I didn't know how to let out until I was sixty: that
kid who lived a life of innocence, mixed with confusion and
consternation, disappointment and dopey humor. And who drew comic
strips and needed friends--and found them--in cartoons and
children's books that told him what the grown-ups in his life had
left out. That's what reading did for me when I was a kid. Now I
try to return the favor."
Jules Feiffer has won a number of prizes for his cartoons, plays,
and screenplays, including the Pulitzer Prize for editorial
cartooning. His books for children include The Man in the Ceiling;
A Barrel of Laughs, A Vale of Tears; I Lost My Bear; Bark, George;
and Meanwhile... He lives in Richfield Springs, New York.
In His Own Words...
"I have been writing and drawing comic strips all my life, first as
a six-year-old, when I'd try to draw like my heroes: Alex Raymond,
who did Flash Gordon, E. C. Segar, who did Popeye, Milton Caniff,
who did Terry and the Pirates. The newspaper strip back in the
1940s was a glorious thing to behold. Sunday pages were full-sized
and colored broadsheets that created a universe that could swallow
a boy whole.
"I was desperate to be a cartoonist. One of my heroes was Will
Eisner, who did a weekly comic book supplement to the Sunday
comics. One day I walked into his office and showed him my samples.
He said they were lousy, but he hired me anyway. And I began my
apprenticeship.
"Later I was drafted out of Eisner's office into the Korean War.
Militarism, regimentation, and mindless authority combined to
squeeze the boy cartoonist out of me and bring out the rebel. There
was no format at the time to fit the work I raged and screamed to
do, so I had to invent one. Cartoon satire that commented on the
military, the bomb, the cold war, the hypocrisy of grown-ups, the
mating habits of urban young men and women: These were my subjects.
After four years of trying to break into print and getting nowhere,
the Village Voice, the first alternative newspaper, offered to
publish me. Only one catch: They couldn't pay me. What did I
care?
"My weekly satirical strip, Sick Sick Sick, later renamed Feiffer,
started appearing in late 1956. Two years later, Sick Sick Sick
came out in book form and became a bestseller. The following years
saw a string of cartoon collections, syndication, stage and screen
adaptations of the cartoon. One, Munro, won an Academy Award.
"This was heady stuff, taking me miles beyond my boyhood dreams.
The only thing that got in the way of my enjoying it was the real
world: the Cuban missile crisis, the assassination of President
Kennedy, the Vietnam War, the civil rights revolution. The country
was coming unglued, and my weekly cartoons didn't seem to be an
adequate way of handling it. So I started writing plays: Little
Murders, The White House Murder Case, Carnal Knowledge, Grown Ups.
All the themes of my comic strips expanded theatrically and, later,
cinematically to give me the time and space I needed to explain the
times to myself and to my audience.
"I grew older. I had a family and, late in life, a very young
family. I started thinking, as old guys will, about what I wanted
these children to read, to learn. I read them E. B. White and
Beverly Cleary and Roald Dahl, and, one day, I thought, Hey, I can
do this."
"Writing for young readers connects me professionally to a part of
myself that I didn't know how to let out until I was sixty: that
kid who lived a life of innocence, mixed with confusion and
consternation, disappointment and dopey humor. And who drew comic
strips and needed friends--and found them--in cartoons and
children's books that told him what the grown-ups in his life had
left out. That's what reading did for me when I was a kid. Now I
try to return the favor."
"Oh, the expression Feiffer manages to coax out of a few keen strokes. His characters are unforgettable, and the pictures burst with the sort of broad physical comedy that children just love." -- Booklist (starred review)
PreS-Gr 2-A lovable pup tries to bark, but all that comes out are other animals' sounds, until a cathartic trip to the vet unleashes the problem. A pack of fun, with droll illustrations and deadpan text. (Sept.) Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.
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