Posy Simmonds. “I think kids might enjoy some tricky words.”

The 2024 Angoulême Comics Festival Grand Prize winner Posy Simmonds is releasing a delicious collection of children’s stories written between 1987 and 2004, a month before a huge exhibition dedicated to her during the next edition of the festival. Five tales (1). Some have already appeared, such as Lulu and the Flying Children Or The Baker’s Cat or the Devastation of Capitalismothers are new. And all of them are preceded here by the presentations signed by the publisher Jean-Luc Fromental, making them contextual and placing them in the work of the author, whose touch and unique fantasy meet. An interview with the one we owe Gemma Bowery, Tamara Drewe, Cassandra Darke but also fun Literary life.

Madame Figaro . – What place do these fairy tales occupy in your work?

Posy Simmonds. – I was a cartoonist for the press for a long time, and my drawings were later collected and printed in books. My editor, Jonathan Cape, was a fan of children’s books and asked if I would like to try my hand at that genre. This is how the tale that opens this collection was born. Fred or cat heaven?. I loved making these books because there was color when press cartoons were always black and white, plus they were for children, so short. The original stories, though Lavender and kind foxes reminds The city rat and the country rat And Matilda, who told terrible lies and burned alive is inspired Boy Who Cried Wolf. The latter is actually an illustration of the tale of the 1920s politician, statesman and writer Hilaire Belloc, to whom we are indebted. cautionary tales, all of which are satires of Victorian morality tales.

How does a children’s story exercise differ from similar works? Gemma Bowery Or Cassandra Dark ?

The difficulty is especially in the story that must be imagined. Even if the fantasy is complete, act with a truth that the child can recognize Lulu and the flying childrenthus, it is a matter of jealousy and sibling rivalry between Lulu and her brother Will. Then Lulu sees the cherubs that come out of the museum where her parents brought her, not as cherubs, but as “flying babies”… Each story is structured differently Fred:for example, the idea came to me one day when I went to a friend’s funeral, and when I came home, I saw that all the cats had peed everywhere. From this base I proceeded to the questions. Who died? A cat. Will there be a funeral? Yes! Will the funeral be lavish? Yes! What? Because the cat was famous? Because he was the Elvis Presley of the cat world…

I was exposed to many ways of drawing and storytelling very early on, and it certainly influenced me a lot.

Posy Simmonds

How do you do it in general?

I always start by filling the notebook with little sketches, in Fred’s case, cats, cherubs, the executioner… Then I write it, then write it again, once, twice, three times, to make it as simple a story as possible, but not simple or simplistic, because I think , that children can, for example, enjoy a few difficult words, as it was when I was a child. I think about the museum Lulu and the Flying Childrenfor example, or at home Matilda with all its Victorian rooms and furniture, which required some documentary research, but I can do other things when I work there; listening to music, answering the phone… It’s not like that when I’m writing. That’s when I need absolute silence and concentration.

This album was released on the eve of the holidays, but also the year you received the Angoulême Grand Prix.How did you feel when you received this award?

It was a huge surprise and I was shocked, especially since I’m British. But England, unlike France or Belgium, is not a comic book country… When I started, as I said, I was working for the English press, and this universe was very different. from those comics. I knew other press cartoonists, but not comic book artists Gemma Bowery published in France, I went to Angoulême and realized that I belonged to a big family of comics.

Your graphic novels playing with classic novels like Gemma Bowery , Tamara Drew Or Cassandra Dark Get out of the box, so to speak… Would you say you invented a genre?

In fact, the limitations of the newspaper. I had to adapt to the space given to me, in the form of a column, Gemma Bowery – forced me to invent a form. I had to put in more text to be able to say everything I had to say, but I could also play with different “levels” of reading, allowing me to change the voice, the tense… It became a game though I had to. Release an episode every day for a hundred days, which was tedious Tamara DrewThe space was different, more square, the rhythm and location were different: a hundred episodes in color and no longer black and white, twice a week, in the literary supplement. Keeper. My editor asked me if I was also going to do a classic concealer in this new series, I said no, and finally yes, I was inspired; Away from the madding crowd by Thomas Hardy, and it continued with Cassandra Darke, the hero’s cousin A Christmas Story By Charles Dickens.

In 1980, you published a kind of pastiche, comic version of the pink novels. True Love . How do you explain your taste in hybrids?

Maybe I like to mix genres because I read mixed things myself as a child and teenager. I read a lot comics – English is adapted to my age, to my older brother, and then to my age comics American books that the other kids at my school were reading, because it was after the war, they lent me. So I was bottle-fed Superman And Spider-Man:as well as horror comicsbut also magazines for young women. I was exposed to many ways of drawing and storytelling very early on, and it certainly influenced me a lot.

(1) Five talesPosy Simmonds, translated from English by Lili Sztajn, Denoël Graphic editions, 144 p., €26.