Nomad Creates Hybrid Kids Texts
by Judith Rosen, PW Comics Week -- Publishers Weekly, 5/22/2007
Nomad Press, a Vermont publisher that also doubles as an ad agency, is teaming up with local comics artists to produce Explore Your World, a series of hybrid educational texts for young readers that uses comics and stand-alone illustration to teach science and history.
"We're constantly trying to figure out ways to impart information to kids," said Alex Kahan, president of Nomad Press and Nomad Communications, an ad agency based in White River Junction, Vt., that designs ad campaigns for Volvo and local ski results. "We felt a lot of stuff out there was dumbed down for six- to nine-year-olds." To keep the reading level high but fun, he approached the Center for Cartoon Studies, a new cartooning school also located in downtown White River Junction, for help. As a result, Nomad hired cartoonist and CCS graduate Alexis Frederick Frost to integrate comics into the text of Maxine Anderson's Explore Spring: 25 Great Ways to Learn About Spring (July) and Explore Winter: 25 Great Ways to Learn About Winter (Aug.). Another CCS graduate, cartoonist Alex Kim, will provide graphic content for two January 2008 releases: Carmella van Vleet's Explore Ancient Egypt! 25 Great Projects, Activities, and Experiments and Explore Ancient Rome! 25 Great Projects, Activities, and Experiments.
Like all of Nomad's publications, the Explore Your World series is curriculum-based and has been vetted by focus groups with teachers, parents and home schoolers. By doing online focus groups every two or three months, said Kahan, "we typically don't have an oh-my-god-it-bombed book." For Kahan, the collaboration with the center has raised the series to a new level. "Graphic novels were never on our radar," Kahan said. "It definitely takes on subject matter where fun isn't the first thing that pops into your mind, but should be." And Kahan says he is also considering doing more hybrid books that use graphics and text to engage young readers.Kahan says Nomad's work in advertising complements its publishing efforts: "it makes you think about the audience." The 15-year-old company has been publishing books for the past five years, and one of its early releases has turned into one its best sellers. Teaching Your Children Good Manners: A Go Parents! Guide by Lauri Berkenkamp and Steven C. Atkins has 72,000 copies in print and won a Parents' Choice seal of approval. Nomad Press is distributed to the trade by IPG.
