Wednesday, November 19, 2008
For the Record
:: Posted by Bryan @ 11/19/2008 12:45:00 AM Missed It By This Much
Skim did not win the Governor-General's Literary Award for Children's Literature yesterday. The book, a graphic novel by cousins Mariko Tamaki and Jillian Tamaki, was beat out by John Ibbitson's The Landing, a prose novel about life in 1930s Muskoka. In related categories, Sylvie Desrosiers' Les trois lieues won in the French-language category. The winning illustrators were Stephane Jorisch (an adaptation of Edward Lear's The Owl and the Pussycat) and Janice Nadeau (Ma meilleure amie, text by Gilles Tibo). See the full list of winners here.
See Neil Gaiman (bottom item), The Vancouver Sun and Heidi MacDonald for more reactions to the controversy surrounding Skim's nomination.
(above Jillian Tamaki illo: a James Bond article on cbc arts)Labels: awards, graphic novels, skim
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Sunday, November 16, 2008
More on GGs and Skim
:: Posted by Bryan @ 11/16/2008 04:24:00 AM 
Following up on his initial response, Brad Mackay has the latest on his blog about the Canada Council's response to the Skim controversy, including interviews with several jurors.
Other links:
Quill and Quire
The GGs Need to Read Understanding Comics
Controversy "Shows the Weakness of "The Canadian Comic Book Industry"
Skim on New York Times, Quill and Quire 'Best of 2008' ListsLabels: awards, graphic novels, skim
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Saturday, November 15, 2008
'Maybe Next Time': GGs to Skim
:: Posted by Bryan @ 11/15/2008 05:00:00 AM 
The Globe and Mail's James Adams has done the journalistic legwork and has dug up a response to the open letter from Seth and Chester Brown to the administrators of the Governor General's Literary Awards in regards to the slight of Jillian Tamaki's contribution to the graphic novel Skim, for which her cousin Mariko Tamaki has been nominated in the Children's Literature --Text category. The open letter argued that the contribution of the artist must be considered equal to the contribution of the writer in a graphic novel --especially one as sophisticated as Skim.
The response, from a spokesperson for the Canada Council, the body that funds and administers the awards, was basically 'Maybe next time':
"We're a little bit late in the game" to either discuss the issue or make the addition, Melanie Rutledge, head of writing and publishing for the Canada Council, said Wednesday evening. But "we'll take it under consideration going forward. ... We're always wanting feedback like this."
It seems like this is a mistake on the part of the GGs since the matter basically comes down to credit where credit is due. There are simply two authors of Skim and one of them was left off of the nominations list. This is not a case of an illustrator making a substantial contribution to a text. As both of the creators have repeatedly asserted, the book was a joint effort and it is impossible to consider it as a work of art solely from the point of view as 'text' or 'illustration'. The Governor General's Awards do not have to create a new category. They simply have to acknowledge the contribution of both creators.
The winners of the awards are to be announced this coming Tuesday.
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Follow-up: Tom Spurgeon interviews some of the principles at Comics Reporter.
(above: Mariko and Jillian Tamaki by Jillian Tamaki)Labels: analysis, awards, graphic novels, skim
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Wednesday, November 12, 2008
An Open Letter to the Governor General's Literary Awards
:: Posted by Bryan @ 11/12/2008 05:18:00 PM The following letter, written by cartoonists Chester Brown and Seth, and endorsed by some of the most respected graphic novel creators in North America, is addressed to the Governor General's Awards, which recently nominated Mariko Tamaki for the graphic novel Skim, co-created with her cousin Jillian Tamaki. (BM)
AN OPEN LETTER TO THE GOVERNOR GENERAL'S LITERARY AWARDS
November 12, 2008
As individuals involved in the art form of comics and graphic novels, we are glad to see that a graphic novel has made the short-list for this year's Governor General's Literary Awards. SKIM (by Mariko and Jillian Tamaki) is a wonderful book and deserves the attention. But we're troubled by the fact that only one of its co-creators is receiving credit for the creation of the book's text. We understand that an award-category exists for illustration, but to have nominated Jillian in that category would not have rectified the problem. Indeed, that would have highlighted how our medium is misunderstood.
We're guessing that the jury who read SKIM saw it as an illustrated novel. It's not; it's a graphic novel. In illustrated novels, the words carry the burden of telling the story, and the illustrations serve as a form of visual reinforcement. But in graphic novels, the words and pictures BOTH tell the story, and there are often sequences (sometimes whole graphic novels) where the images alone convey the narrative. The text of a graphic novel cannot be separated from its illustrations because the words and the pictures together ARE the text. Try to imagine evaluating SKIM if you couldn't see the drawings. Jillian's contribution to the book goes beyond mere illustration: she was as responsible for telling the story as Mariko was.
In an October 21st article for the CBC website, one of your jurors, Teresa Toten, was interviewed: "Toten praised SKIM for using the graphic novel format to tell a sophisticated story about what life is like for teenaged girls. The work is remarkable in part because of how the words and pictures both contribute to the literary quality, she said." And that is the point of this letter. "[T]he words and pictures both contribute to [SKIM's] literary quality".
A new category does not need to be created to properly address the graphic novel. In fact, it is best to see graphic novels appear in literary awards only when they deserve to compete equally against prose on their literary merit alone.
In writing this letter, we don't mean to slight Mariko. One of the reasons this collaboration works so well is because she understood how to write for this medium. But we feel that as things now stand, Jillian is being slighted. We want both of the enormously talented creators of this book to be honoured together for their achievement.
Yours,
Chester Brown (Author of Louis Riel)
Seth (Author of It's a Good Life, If You Don't Weaken)
NAMES IN SUPPORT OF THIS LETTER
Lynda Barry (Author of What It Is)
Peter Birkemoe (Owner of The Beguiling)
Dan Clowes (Author of Ghost World)
David Collier (Author of The Frank Ritza Papers)
Julie Doucet (Author of 365 Days)
Chris Oliveros (Publisher of Drawn and Quarterly)
Joe Ollmann (Author of This Will All End in Tears)
Bryan Lee O'Malley (Author of Scott Pilgrim)
Michel Rabagliati (Author of Paul Moves Out)
Art Spiegelman (Pulitzer Prize winning author of Maus)
Adrian Tomine (Author of Shortcomings)
Chris Ware (Author of Jimmy Corrigan, Smartest Kid on Earth)Labels: awards, graphic novels, skim
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Tuesday, October 21, 2008
Skim Nominated for Governor General's Award
:: Posted by Bryan @ 10/21/2008 08:16:00 PM  GGs Find Place for Graphic Novel in KidLit Category, Snub Artist
Toronto --For the first time, a graphic novel has been nominated for a Governor General's Award. The Canada Council for the Arts announced its 2008 shortlist for the Governor General's Literary Awards earlier today, and writer Mariko Tamaki was nominated for Skim, a graphic novel she produced with her artist cousin Jillian Tamaki, in the category Children's Literature --Text.
After the Giller Prize, the GGs are the most lucrative literary award in Canada.
Tamaki's nomination marks the first time a graphic novel has been nominated in any category. Tamaki stands to win $25,000 if her book is chosen as the winner on November 18 in Montreal.
According to the GG news release, "Each winner will receive $25,000 and a specially-bound copy of the winning book. The publisher of each winning book will receive $3,000 to support promotional activities. Non-winning finalists will each receive $1,000 in recognition of their selection as finalists, bringing the total value of the Awards to approximately $450,000."
Skim was initially published as a short comic by Kiss Machine in 2005 and won a special award from the Doug Wright Awards. An extended version was published this year by Groundwood Books/House of Anansi Press (distributed by HarperCollins Canada). The book has been enthusiastically and widely reviewed and has been a brisk seller on the graphic novel bestseller charts.
The juror's notes for the GG nomination describe Skim as "an audacious and original graphic novel set in a girls' private school. Skim, a slightly lumpy Kimberly Cameron, stumbles around the edges of cliques, depression, sexuality, suicide, crushes and an achingly ambiguous love. The story is heart-breakingly fresh and, in the end, a small celebration of life."
Tamaki's nomination is an indication of the increasing mainstream profile of graphic novels. It is also one of those happy occasions when an actual work of very high literary quality is chosen to represent the artform in the national spotlight.
The nomination of the book in the "text" category, with no mention of the art by Jillian Tamaki, is an odd but understandable choice, given the lack of a graphic novel category, since the book succeeds more on the strength of its words and picture combination than on the contribution of any one creator. The nomination in the children's category also does not do much for the status of literary graphic novels as adult material, especially given Skim's darkly humourous subject matter and sophisticated comics storytelling. On her blog, Jillian Tamaki notes, "I can't help but feel a bit of disappointment in this. I simply don't believe you can separate the pictures and words in a GRAPHIC NOVEL. They do the same for Children's Books with the GGs, which I kind of think is strange, but hey, at least the authors get an acknowledgment in the Illustrator's section. (...) I think this is another illustration (snort) of the chasm the graphic novels sit in, between "Comics" and "Books". The book industry is set up for very defined genres and graphic novels can pose a strange conundrum."Labels: awards, graphic novels, news, Ontario, skim, Toronto
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