julia’s house for lost creatures

The folks at First Second (Macmillan) have found a gem in author/illustrator Ben Hatke.  I read his graphic novels in the Zita the Spacegirl series this summer and enjoyed their energy, intergalactic travel and art immensely.  I was very interested in seeing his first picture book, Julia's House for Lost Creatures, and can I just say… it does not disappoint.  I’ll be picking up everything Hatke creates from here on out.

When Julia and her walking house come to town, she likes everything about her new neighborhood except how quiet it is! So Julia puts a sign up: "Julia's House for Lost Creatures." Soon she's hosting goblins, mermaids, fairies, and even a dragon. Quiet isn't a problem anymore for Julia...but getting her housemates to behave themselves is!

The simple, sweet text of this picture book by New York Times best-selling Zita the Spacegirl author/illustrator Ben Hatke is perfectly balanced by his lush, detailed, immersive watercolor illustrations.

Julia is a resourceful girl.  When she and her house set up shop by the sea, she realizes that it is too quiet.  She makes a sign and waits… and soon finds a new group of friends with which to share her house.  The magic of friendship might be strained by mess and bother, but Julia knows how to fix this problem too… and in the end, peace (if you want to call it that) is restored.

While the text of Julia’s House for Lost Creatures is quite brief, it is still funny, charming, fantastical and sweet.  It also tells a short story, but the ending leaves the door half open for imagination.  Children and adults alike may find themselves wondering “What happens next?” and the beauty of it is that Hatke introduced so many varied characters in the space of a short book that anything is possible (and very likely probable).  And after all, what is better than a book that can carry you away in a daydream?

The art is really the thing about this book, and it is just adorable.  I really don’t know another, more refined way to put that.  There are the main things: Julia running to and fro making signs and answering the door, the lost creatures themselves, the house! by the sea, and then there are also the unexpected details and lovely watercolor washes and the sense of a whole world that anyone could invite inside.  I used the word charming before, and that’s really the sense of the whole book: it’s delightful and whimsical, and it should (with any luck) make the reader’s heart happy.

Recommended for: fans of picture books (especially those enthralled by inventive art and fantastical themes), and anyone who liked Levi Pinfold’s Black Dog.

Fine print: I received a copy of this book from the publisher for review consideration.  I did not receive any compensation for this post.

zita the spacegirl author interview with ben hatke

Author and illustrator Ben Hatke is here today at Adventures of Cecelia Bedelia for an interview.  His middle grade graphic novel Zita the Spacegirl is the first in a sci-fi comics trilogy that features a young heroine saving the day... and the planet. The third book, The Return of Zita the Spacegirl, was released by First Second (Macmillan) on May 13, 2014. 

Ben Hatke's first graphic novel was Zita the Spacegirl. He has published comics stories in the Flight series as well as Flight Explorer.  In addition to writing and drawing comics, he also paints in the naturalist tradition and, occasionally, performs one-man fire shows.

Hatke lives and works in the Shenandoah Valley with his wife and their boisterous pack of daughters.  You can learn more on his author website.

Welcome Ben!

You have four girls of your own.  Did any of their antics inspire Zita's adventures?

Their crazy antics definitely inspire me but I think the two handiest things about having a pack of little girls is 

1) that I have an immediate audience of different ages all checking up on my work. They are often my first story critics and it's great to talk to them about whatever I'm working on because they always let me know if story points are confusing, or if jokes fall flat.

and 2) I have a bunch of little models of various ages running around. Sketching kids is a fantastic exercise, and because they really don't sit still you learn to draw fast -- catch things in as few lines as possible. In fact the book I'm working on now stars a 6-year-old girl, and I've caught a lot of poses from my own 6-year-old.

What is your favorite Zita quality?

I think it's her temper. She has this terrible sense of justice and she ends up being kind of a dangerous enemy when she's angry.

Who/what are your influences in comics and prose?

That's a rather looong list, but I'll name a few of the big ones. In prose I'd say Roald Dahl was a big one, as was G.K. Chesterton, C.S. Lewis, Lloyd Alexander, Neil Gaiman, Randall Jarrell...

Artistically, there's the intersection of Jim Henson and Brian Froud, Maurice Sendak and Trina Schart Hyman, Arthur Rackham and Howard Pyle.... And funny enough, I'm still very much inspired by the Italian Renaissance because it was a time of such explosive creativity when the idea of the artist and the inventor were often very much the same. 

What are you working on right now? 

Right now I am working on a book called Little Robot. It's about a young girl and a small robot and their very particular friendship over the course of a summer. It takes place in locations based on places near my own house so I've been able to go out and sketch from life quite a bit and take a lot of reference photos. It's been a really fun project.

What's one book you read as an adult that you wish had been around when you were a kid?

You know, I feel like there were more books that actually were around when I was a kid but that I just didn't know about. Jeff Smith's Bone was around when I was a teenager. WHY DIDN'T ANYBODY TELL ME?

What is one sci-fi classic I absolutely MUST read?

Oh man... I wish I had some little-known gem... If you haven't actually read The Time Machine then do that even if just for the crabs. And this might not qualify as a classic, but one book I've really enjoyed is The Draco Tavern by Larry Niven. It's like a whole book of the Star Wars cantina scene.

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Thank you for taking the time to answer those questions, Ben!  I thoroughly enjoyed Zita’s adventures (see my review of the first in the series here), especially the mix of humor and friendship, and the subtle homages to sci-fi in pop culture.  I can’t wait to see where your next book takes us!

Ben Hatke brings back our intrepid space heroine for another delightful sci-fi/fantasy adventure in this New York Times‑bestselling graphic novel trilogy for middle grade readers.

Zita the Spacegirl has saved planets, battled monsters, and wrestled with interplanetary fame. But she faces her biggest challenge yet in the third and final installment of the Zita adventures. Wrongfully imprisoned on a penitentiary planet, Zita has to plot the galaxy's greatest jailbreak before the evil prison warden can execute his plan of interstellar domination!

Fine print: I received the Zita the Spacegirl trilogy for honest review from the publisher.  I did not receive any compensation for this post.

zita the spacegirl

I’ve been on a bit of an unconscious break from middle grade sci-fi and fantasy.  I continue to want to pick these titles up, and I’ll borrow from the library or buy, but they’ve (for the most part) lain in unread piles around the apartment.  Why this malaise toward a genre I love and spent several months reading exclusively as a judge for the 2013 CYBILS awards?  Just that, I think—too much exposure in too short a time.  But as I said, this has (until very recently) been unconscious on my part.  I didn’t realize I was avoiding them until I read a really lovely set of middle grade sci-fi graphic novels.  When I was done, I looked around for other MG books to compare them to – and found that I’d gone into a black hole in 2014.  Well, you’ll be happy to hear that Ben Hatke’s Zita the Spacegirl books have cured me, and I can’t wait to dive back into to wonderful middle grade sci-fi and fantasy.

Zita’s life took a cosmic left turn in the blink of  an eye.

When her best friend is abducted by an alien doomsday cult, Zita leaps to the rescue and finds herself a stranger on a strange planet. Humanoid chickens and neurotic robots are shocking enough as new experiences go, but Zita is even more surprised to find herself taking on the role of intergalactic hero. Before long, aliens in all shapes and sizes don’t even phase her. Neither do ancient prophecies, doomed planets, or even a friendly con man who takes a mysterious interest in Zita’s quest.

Zita the Spacegirl is a fun, captivating tale of friendship and redemption from Flight veteran Ben Hatke. It also has more whimsical, eye-catching, Miyazaki-esque monsters than you can shake a stick at.

While romping outdoors one day, Zita and her friend Joseph discover a device embedded in the remains of an asteroid.  When Zita presses a button and a flash of light swallows Joseph, she is frightened, but determined to follow and rescue him from his uncertain fate.  So begin Zita’s adventures in space – for using the device has catapulted her through a portal and onto another planet, into the midst of a whole host of unknown creatures.  Zita will have to exercise all of her wit, courage and kindness to survive (and find a way home).

The absolute star of the piece (as the title suggests) is Zita.  She’s adventurous, brave, loyal to friends new and old, and stuck in the ultimate uncomfortable situation.  When she can’t immediately rescue Joseph she uses her strengths to find the path to a solution.  Zita is tenacious, and she’s just the active, non-violent heroine for a rescue operation. 

As for setting, Zita has landed on Scriptorious, a planet that everyone is desperate to flee due to an approaching asteroid.  The scenes in the market, when everyone is trying to get off-world, reminded me of the same predicament in the first Men in Black film.  There are enough strange and amazing creatures filling the pages to stretch any imagination.  Zita’s especial friends are Piper (a shifty, tinkering humanoid), Mouse (a giant mouse whose collar spits out paper communiqués), One (a flying, armed battle ball) and Randy (a mish-mash robot with wheels for legs).  Together they are a motley, unstoppable force held together by the glue of Zita’s friendship and purpose.

Ben Hatke has created a colorful world for Zita to venture through, and while the comic panels vary in size, the art is uniformly lovely.  The landscapes vary – some are Earth-as-we-know-it, and others bring to mind Tatooine from Star Wars or Wall-E’s waste-ridden future Earth.  Zita herself could belong to one of many nationalities or ethnic groups, and I believe that is a huge point in the book’s favor.  She’s drawn in such a way that the reader may make his/her own conclusions.

Overall, this is an engaging read with a heroine who relies on the power of friendship, trust and ingenuity to succeed.  While Zita the Spacegirl is certainly sci-fi, there are enough whimsical touches (the Pied Piper who owns a tube of doorpaste, for instance!) that this graphic novel will please fans of fantasy as well.

Recommended for: fans of Kate DiCamillo’s Flora & Ulysses, and anyone (ages 8+) who enjoys speculative fiction, true heroism, and stories about friendship.

Fine print: I received a free copy of Zita the Spacegirl for review from the publisher.  I did not receive any compensation for this post.