Barry Deutsch on 'Hereville'
RSSBy Brigid Alverson
To the delight of Barry Deutsch's online followers, his popular web comic featuring "yet another troll-fighting 11-year-old Orthodox Jewish girl" is now available in print. SLJ caught up with Deutsch to talk about his first graphic novel, Hereville: How Mirka Got Her Sword (Abrams, 2010), and how he managed to weave a mix of fantasy and culture in this captivating, modern folk tale. Hereville is also one of 16 titles chosen to compete in SLJ's Battle of the Kids' Books contest. If it's a favorite of yours, you can vote for it in our Undead Poll. Hereville is different from any other book out there right now. Briefly describe the story to us? Hereville is the story of Mirka, an 11-year-old girl growing up in a very traditional Orthodox community. But all she dreams of is being a monster-fighting hero, which isn't very traditional for a girl in her community! It's about the magical adventures Mirka has and also about her home life and her family. What challenges did the setting pose for you as a storyteller, and how did it enrich the book? The main challenge is to find a connection I can make, as a cartoonist, with material that's so different from my own life. There's a story about a jazz singer, not herself religious, who was asked how she could sing religious songs so beautifully without being a believer. She responded, "I believe while I'm singing." So it's something like that. How did you write about high school life—even details like how different girls wear the same uniform in different ways—so convincingly? I'm glad you found it convincing. Gender is only a huge, big deal for writers who make it into a huge, big deal, in my opinion. With any character, there's so much more in common than different. Mirka is an 11-year-old girl, and her worldview and experiences are very different than mine. But we have so much overlap, as well. She loves her parents, I love my parents, she squabbles with an older sister. I've done that. She has a weird ambition that no one thinks is practical—well, that's almost my life story. Of course, you also need specifics—things like the way different girls dress for school. And that's where research comes in! The particular detail of how different kinds of girls wear their school outfits came from the anthropologist Stephanie Levine's wonderful book about teenage Hasidic girls, Mystics Mavericks and Merrymakers. Mirka's stepmother, Fruma, is both sharp and loving. Given the traditional portrayal of stepmothers as wicked, why was it important that Mirka live in a blended family? Originally, I was just having fun playing with fairy-tale tropes—giving Mirka a powerful stepmother figure ruling her life, like so many girls in fairy tales, but twisting it up by making the stepmother an extremely likable character. The more I developed the story, though, the more important it seemed. It's nice to have Mirka have a close female friend, her stepsister Rochel, whose life experiences are so different from Mirka's. And this sounds strange, but knowing how incredibly wounded Mirka was by the loss of her first mother is really important to my understanding of her character. When I began the Hereville webcomic, I had no idea what I was doing! I just made up the first page and drew it. But the more research I did, the more in focus Mirka and her life became to me. For example, I realized that she'd come from a big family, and so there should be more siblings in the story. So that's the reason for many of the changes between the webcomic and the graphic novel—my view of Mirka and her life had become richer, and I wanted the graphic novel to reflect that. In other cases, I just wanted to fix things I thought were wrong in the original webcomic. For instance, in the webcomic, Mirka gains the Witch's help after rescuing the Witch from a couple of bullies. But I never really bought that—why should the Witch need Mirka's help, rather than defending herself? Why is it important to tell Mirka's story as a graphic novel rather than in straight prose? There's no inherent reason that this story couldn't have been told in prose. But if it had been in prose, I don't think I could have told it, because I'm not a novelist; I'm a cartoonist. Like most cartoonists, I've developed a vocabulary of cartooning techniques over the years, which I can use to tell this story—not just the events of the story, but also the emotional undercurrents, or so I hope. So, for example, when Mirka is underwater, in danger of being overwhelmed not only by the physical danger but also by her own panicked thoughts, I think I was able to find a layout that really communicated that well. I don't think I could have written that same content nearly as effectively in prose, although I'm sure a skilled novelist could have. Plus, the truth is, I'm just plain in love with comics. Drawing a comic is probably twice as much work as writing a prose story, and I'm always unhappy with my drawings, but at the same time nothing gives me more satisfaction than having created a new page of comics. This article originally appeared in the newsletter Extra Helping. Go here to subscribe. Congratulations to Barry Deutsch once again. Hereville is the 2011 Sydney Taylor Book Award Winner for Older Readers. This award is given annually by the Association of Jewish Libraries for excellence Jewish Children's Literature. * = Required information
You originally wrote Hereville as a webcomic, then expanded the story when it was picked up by Abrams. Why did you change it?
Reader Comments (1)
Posted by K. Pinchuck on March 3, 2011 04:03:12PM
