Craddock Mambos onto Graphic Novel Scene with Stone Rabbit Series

This story originally appeared in PW Comics Week on December 16, 2008 Sign up now!

By Stephanie Mangold -- Publishers Weekly, 12/15/2008 4:31:00 PM

In Eric Craddock's Stone Rabbit: BC Mambo (Random House, Jan.), a bored little bunny finds himself transported into prehistoric times, leading to a Jurassic journey of mischief and morals. “It’s kind of one zany adventure after another,” Craddock said. “It starts out in modern times, in his home town of Happy Glades, and he is magically transported to prehistoric times where he finds a clan of cave rabbits and a Neanderthal bent on conquering the world using a fast food franchise.”

Like the hit Babymouse series, also published by Random House, the Stone Rabbit series is geared toward children ages 5 to 10, and is the same size as traditional chapter books. The first volume was released on January 13.

Craddock originally developed the character of Stone Rabbit while studying at New York City’s School of Visual Arts. At the time, he was trying to find himself artistically. “The types of comics I do weren’t always popular, back then they were out on the fringe,” he said.

Craddock spent time working with animation and working on other graphic novels, such as The Blade of Kringle, before eventually pitching Stone Rabbit to Random House.

“It’s almost like Stone Rabbit was custom tailored; it was exactly what we wanted,” said editor Chris Angellili. “I think what really grabbed it for me was as soon as I saw the art—the look of it. It’s graphic, it’s cute, and it’s a little edgy. It looks right like it came out of a video game or Japanese anime series and I think kids are really going to respond to it.”

“I kind of do have a natural inclination for that [writing for kids],” said Craddock. “I find -- at least this is my experience -- that the correct way to do children’s book writing and children’s book illustration is not when you have a collection of smiling heads starring blankly into space, because the kid whose reading it is going to have little or no connection to it.”

For his part, Angellili echoed Craddock’s sentiments explaining that many other graphic novels seem to be “talking heads.” By contrast, Stone Rabbit offers readers a great deal of action, without taking away from the stories.

Craddock says that creators need to have a full range of emotions. They need to have a full knowledge of art and cannot fake or truncate their storytelling for the child’s benefit. “I’m competing against guys like Pixar and DreamWorks because these kids are connoisseurs of entertainment,” he said.

Another important element in the series for Craddock is always trying to have a moral to the story, no matter how subtle it is. He seeks to show his readers an example, as opposed to lecturing them; the first book deals with ambition and fear and the second book tackles the subject of peer pressure. Characters will often have to face a no-win situation and find a way to work through it.

“The characters in my stories, despite the fact that they’re animals, are very human and have human traits. These characters have no super powers -- they’re normal and they have to try to make the best out of what they’re given,” he said.

Thus far, four books are planned for the series. The second, Stone Rabbit: Pirate Palooza, follows Stone Rabbit on a journey on the deep sea. The third book will have an outer space theme and the fourth is a superhero parody. Craddock says each volume is self-contained and readers do not have to have any previous knowledge of Stone Rabbit to jump in.

“I don’t see an end in sight to the series,” said Craddock. “I have plenty of ideas, plenty of things I can write. We’re going to have a long-term relationship, Random House and I.”

Angellili says Random House has long had an interest in developing a successful series of graphic novels for young readers, but that there hadn’t really been a place for such titles in the graphic novels section. However, the success of Babymouse has proven that books with that size and price point can find a home in the kids' section, where parents and readers can easily find them, as opposed to in the graphic novel section, which parents might not think of checking for kids' reading material. The only complaint they received from retailers about Babymouse, says Angellili, is why there wasn’t a similar series for boys.

“In many respects we feel like Stone Rabbit is for the boys out there, that sort of same age range,” said Kate Klimo, v-p and publisher of Random House/Golden Books for Young Readers. “It’s an age we court anyway. We have a big franchise in the chapter book area with Stepping Stones, Magic Tree House and Junie B. Jones, so we get that reader and we pull in some readers we don’t get with Stone Rabbit.”

In addition to Stone Rabbit and Babymouse, Random House has two more graphic novel series for young readers in the works: The Sons of Liberty, a superhero story about an escaped slave during the Civil war, by Alexander and Joseph Lagos and Squish, the story of an amoeba, by Mat Holm. Random House currently plans to publish two books a year for Squish and Babymouse and one book for The Sons of Liberty.

“You’re reaching kids who respond best to visual stimulus and for whom the graphic novel is a perfect exercise in following text on the page, in putting together the elements of narrative,” Klimo said.