Gentle december day 2

This was a 2-minute comic.

The book I'm reading is called North Sun Or, the Voyage of the Whaleship Esther by Ethan Rutherford . I started it today, it's a snowday so everyone is home, and it's killing me that I can't just spend all day reading this.

Today, my favorite kids book is Days With Frog and Toad by Arnold Lobel

This is the volume that contains my favorite story, which is also the final Frog and Toad story, "Alone".

Reading frog and toad to my daughter Beatrice really changed a lot for me. It completely shifted my perspective in terms of what I wanted to do with my art. It encouraged me to open up to a more sensitive side of myself and be ok with making work that was fundamentally non-aggressive. This is what led me to start making Kricket the Cat comics.

I am really interested in Arnold Lobel. He was married to another amazing picture book artist, Anita Lobel. A gay man, he did come out to his family and was supported by them and I think they stayed together for a time but eventually separated. He died as a victim of the AIDS crisis in 1987. I don't know much more about him to be honest but I feel like I understand him quite a bit through his beautiful and kind-hearted work. Maybe that's naive, I dunno!