The many adventures of Benny & Penny
Artist, Geoffrey Hayes, has illustrated many other children’s books including Margaret Wise Brown’s, When the Wind Blew. But his latest efforts are on The Adventures of Benny and Penny series published by TOON Books in NYC. These charming handcrafted drawings give these stories a soft and sweet old fashioned feel and somewhat timeless quality to them.
Both stories, “Just Pretend” and “The Big No-No!” capture with great accuracy the quick and sometimes bitter conflicts young siblings deal with many times throughout any given day. I think it is this that makes these stories engaging for the kids. I think the kids actually connect with the characters in the stories, quite simply Benny and Penny speak directly to them often responding to situations exactly like a preschooler would, case in point, at one point Penny proclaims, “I had to go pee-pee!”.
Then again, there are the Vaudevillian prat falls and other physical humor peppered throughout these stories get a chuckle out of them and keep them turning the pages.
It also helps that the panel-work of these junior comics is easy to follow, Hayes employs simple dialogue with proper doses of repetition and a well-chosen yet limited vocabulary to tell these simple stories.
It should be said that the publishers of this series, a small division of RAW Junior (husband and wife team, Francoise Mouly [*The New Yorker & Raw Books] and Art Spiegelman [*Maus]) have done a splendid job packaging these storybook/graphic mini-novels designed as primers for graphic novels and comics.
In summary, I would give these books two thumbs up. The timelessness of the pencil drawings and simple story make these Beginner Toon books very approachable for first time readers. They are labeled as age appropriate for 4-8 year old’s but feel they are well within reach for pre-readers (toddlers) as well as preschoolers.
Related and Sited Links:
Geoffrey Hayes | Benny and Penny; Just Pretend
Geoffrey Hayes | Benny and Penny; The Big No-No!
Margaret Wise Brown | When the Wind Blew
Art Spiegelman | Maus
Other TOON Books…
