{"id":74104,"date":"2025-07-02T10:51:13","date_gmt":"2025-07-02T14:51:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/backroom\/?p=74104"},"modified":"2025-07-03T13:14:54","modified_gmt":"2025-07-03T17:14:54","slug":"i-arrogantly-recommend-59-by-tom-bowden","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/backroom\/2025\/07\/02\/i-arrogantly-recommend-59-by-tom-bowden\/","title":{"rendered":"i arrogantly recommend… #59 by Tom Bowden"},"content":{"rendered":"

I arrogantly recommend… is a monthly column of unusual, overlooked, ephemeral, small press, comics, and books in translation reviews by our friend, bibliophile, and retired ceiling tile inspector Tom Bowden, who tells us, “This platform allows me to exponentially increase the number of people reached who have no use for such things.”<\/p>\n

Links are provided to our Bookshop.org affiliate page<\/a>, our Backroom gallery page<\/a>, or the book’s publisher. Bookshop.org is an alternative to Amazon that benefits indie bookstores nationwide. If you notice titles unavailable online, please call and we’ll try to help.<\/p>\n

Read more arrogantly recommended reviews at: i arrogantly recommend…<\/a><\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/a>Mr. Distinctive<\/a>
\nOlga Tokarczuk\/Antonia Lloyd-Jones, Joanna Concejo (Illustrator)
\nSeven Stories Press<\/p>\n

A short cautionary tale (translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones) about narcissism in general and its sub-genre, the social-media selfie in which over-abundance (which social media specializes in) is the great leveler, taking that which is distinctive and homogenizing it into a new mediocrity: the by-product of a society in which people can get what they want, assuming they have the cash. And people want what they see other people have. Beautifully illustrated by Joanna Concejo, whose images perfectly match and subtly underscore the story\u2019s moral for adults\u2014an excellent, successful collaboration in which the work of each participant highlights the significance of the other\u2019s contribution.<\/p>\n

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UNRULY BOOKS<\/a><\/p>\n

Unruly Books is a new imprint from Enchanted Lion, a publisher of original children\u2019s books and books in translation. Also consisting of picture books, Unruly Books is instead targeted at teens and adults, to create a space where the picture book can truly break out for older readers, where it can expand and flourish as the boundless storytelling medium that it is.\u201d Furthermore, \u201cThe importance of narrative picture books for adults and teens lies in the fact that there are things we apprehend that we cannot comprehend, and that what art shows forth is a wild excess of meaning. It is pictures that present us with what is not reducible to a single meaning or understanding, pictures that put us face-to-face with mystery.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Q&A with Claudia Zoe Bedrick<\/strong>, the publisher, editor, and art director of Enchanted Lion Books, an award-winning, independent publisher based in Red Hook, Brooklyn.<\/p>\n

TB:<\/strong> \u201cPicture books\u201d and \u201cgraphic novels\u201d seems to imply different audiences: picture books are for children too young to read or just emerging as readers; graphic novels are for teens and adults who want longer, more complex narratives. How do you distinguish picture books for adults from graphic novels for adults?<\/p>\n

CB:<\/strong> Our contention in forming our Unruly imprint is that picture books are not an age group at all, but a unique, combinatory medium for telling stories. Picture books are not graphic novels, as each engages a different form of visual storytelling. So picture books for adults and graphic novels for adults are different ways of combining images and words to tell stories. Of course, there are hybrid forms for children and adults that might combine the conventions of comics, which mark the graphic novel, with picture book illustration, which uses the compositional space of the book in a different manner from panels and bubbles and graphic novel conventions.<\/p>\n

TB:<\/strong> What issues or topics for older readers do you think might be better or best expressed through the medium of picture books?<\/p>\n

CB:<\/strong> I don’t think there are any themes or topics that cry out for the picture book format. Rather, all themes and topics are welcome, but need be in dialogue with a visual narrative or even a non-narrative but visual, conceptual world to constitute a picture book. What I do think is that the experimental, poetic, unique space that is the picture book, where words and pictures are in dialogue with each other as in no other form, comes as an invitation & a catalyst for stories to be told in the musical, multidimensional, and visual ways that can only happen in the picture book. This comes as a great enticement to artists, poets, and writers, as you might imagine.<\/p>\n

TB:<\/strong> What led to the moment where you decided or received an insight that picture books for older readers wasn\u2019t just a novelty idea for publication but perhaps something vital missing for contemporary readers?<\/p>\n

CB:<\/strong> Unruly is very much an experimental imprint and unruly it is. Not all of the books we’ve published are actually picture books and we’ve been a bit unruly in what we’ve acquired. It’s not even clear that the imprint will survive. As for the idea for the imprint, we discuss many ideas in our office and we have been pondering the picture book as a medium for a long time. The book that launched the imprint is The True Story of a Mouse Who Never Asked For It<\/em>. It’s the retelling of an old Spanish folk tale about a cat and a mouse, so it seemed like we were doing a straight up picture book, but then the illustrator, Violeta Lopiz, attached a silent visual coda that transformed the story from being about a cat and a mouse to being about a female artist who has clearly been abused (a deep theme of the folk tale) and is pulling her life together. The violence that has happened is there in the color red, as it is in the folk tale portion of the book, but it’s also now present in the cutting off of hair, and the cleaning up of a room in which something violent has clearly happened. It was this silent code that made us decide to launch Unruly, since it was clear that we weren’t going to publish the book, which requires a mature understanding of life experiences, for children under our Enchanted Lion imprint. Our readers trust us. Many in our community have bought almost every book we’ve published, so we weren’t going to suddenly publish a book that just isn’t made for children and offer it as such. So it was this book that gave us the chance to push the boundaries of what a picture book might be even further and to launch into more unchartered and experimental territory.<\/p>\n

TB:<\/strong> How many titles a year do you hope to publish?<\/p>\n

CB:<\/strong> One title a year.<\/p>\n

TB:<\/strong> Thank you, and good luck!<\/p>\n