In Praise of Jeff Smith, Bone
Skip to comments
Bone creator Jeff Smith will receive the Milton Caniff Lifetime Achievement Award at this year’s National Cartoonist Society’s annual Reuben Conference. And he’s being recognized as one of “seven books you’ll never outgrow” and Ruben Bolling reports the honor for Boing Boing.
The Atlantic’s Rafaela Jinich included Bone series in an article of Seven Books You’ll Never Outgrow (paywall). You can read Jinich’s take on the Bone series over at Boneville.com. Excerpt below.
One year in elementary school, while wandering a Scholastic Book Fair— that budding bookworm’s delight—I found a graphic novel called Out From Boneville. The book’s cover featured a cute, simply drawn white figure, something like a combination of Casper the Friendly Ghost and Moomin. I bought it, not suspecting the journey that awaited me.
The Bone series, comprising nine books largely self-published by Smith, is high fantasy masquerading as kid lit. It’s also hilarious.
Tom the Dancing Bug creator Ruben Bolling has written an article about Jeff receiving the lifetime achievement ward for Boing Boing.
It’s fitting that Smith will receive this award this year, as the conference will take place in Columbus, Ohio, the city where he grew up and where Bone was created.
I recommend Bone for everyone, but especially for elementary school-age kids. It’s an exciting, mysterious story, and the artwork is absolutely some of the most appealing in the history of cartooning.
Comments