Parent company | Roaring Brook Press (Macmillan Publishers) |
---|---|
Founded | 2006 |
Country of origin | United States |
Headquarters location | Equitable Building, New York City |
Distribution | Worldwide |
Key people | Mark Siegel |
Publication types | Graphic novels |
Official website | Official website |
First Second Books is an American publisher of graphic novels. An imprint of Roaring Brook Press, part of Holtzbrinck Publishers, First Second publishes fiction, biographies, personal memoirs, history, visual essays, and comics journalism. It also publishes graphic non-fiction for young readers, including the Science Comics and History Comics collections, and for adults, including the World Citizen Comics, a line of civics graphic books, and biographical works such as The Accidental Czar .
Authors and artists published by First Second include Ben Hatke, [1] Gene Luen Yang, [1] Jillian Tamaki, [2] Vera Brosgol, Jen Wang, Shannon Hale, LeUyen Pham, Scott Chantler, and Japanese director Hayao Miyazaki. [3]
First Second is headed by creative director Mark Siegel. [4]
First Second launched in U.S. stores and online in May 2006. [5] It was distributed by Macmillan in the rest of the English-speaking world. After the merger in 2010, Macmillan distributes all of the books.
In 2006, First Second published American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang, [6] the first graphic novel ever nominated for a National Book Award, [7] and the first ever to win the American Library Association's Michael L. Printz Award. [8] [9]
In 2015, First Second published This One Summer by cousins Jillian and Mariko Tamaki, the first book in any format ever nominated as a finalist for both the American Library Association's Randolph Caldecott Award, and the American Library Association's Edward L. Printz Award. [10]
Some of First Second's biggest hits include the InvestiGators series and the Real Friends trilogy.
Series published by First Second include:
Joann Sfar is a French comics artist, comic book creator, novelist, and film director.
Derek Kirk Kim is a Korean-American comics artist and filmmaker.
The Ignatz Awards recognize outstanding achievements in comics and cartooning by small press creators or creator-owned projects published by larger publishers. They have been awarded each year at the Small Press Expo since 1997, only skipping a year in 2001 due to the show's cancellation after the September 11 attacks. As of 2014 SPX has been held in either Bethesda, North Bethesda, or Silver Spring, Maryland.
The Michael L. Printz Award is an American Library Association literary award that annually recognizes the "best book written for teens, based entirely on its literary merit". It is sponsored by Booklist magazine; administered by the ALA's young-adult division, the Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA); and named for the Topeka, Kansas, school librarian Mike Printz, a long-time active member of YALSA. Up to four worthy runners-up may be designated Honor Books and three or four have been named every year.
Lark Pien is an American cartoonist who has created the minicomics Stories from the Ward, Mr. Boombha, and Long Tail Kitty, the last of which won her the Friends of Lulu Kimberly Yale Award for Best New Talent in 2004.
Sonny Liew is a Malaysia-born comic artist/illustrator based in Singapore. He is best known for The Art of Charlie Chan Hock Chye (2015), the first graphic novel to win the Singapore Literature Prize for fiction.
Gene Luen Yang is an American cartoonist. He is a frequent lecturer on the subjects of graphic novels and comics, at comic book conventions and universities, schools, and libraries. In addition, he was the Director of Information Services and taught computer science at Bishop O'Dowd High School in Oakland, California. In 2012, Yang joined the faculty at Hamline University as a part of the Low-Residency Master of Fine Arts in Writing for Children and Young Adults (MFAC) program. In 2016, the U.S. Library of Congress named him Ambassador for Young People's Literature. That year he became the third graphic novelist, alongside Lauren Redniss, to receive a MacArthur Fellowship.
Skim is a Canadian graphic novel written by Mariko Tamaki and drawn by Jillian Tamaki. Set in 1993, in a Toronto Catholic girls high school, it is about an outsider girl called Skim.
Mark Siegel is known both as an author, illustrator, and as the editorial director of First Second Books, a Macmillan imprint which publishes graphic novels for all ages. He grew up in France until the age of 18, after which he moved back to the United States where he presently lives.
Jillian Tamaki is a Canadian American illustrator and comic artist known for her work in The New York Times and The New Yorker in addition to the graphic novels Boundless, as well as Skim, This One Summer and Roaming written by her cousin Mariko Tamaki.
Mariko Tamaki is a Canadian artist and writer. She is known for her graphic novels Skim, Emiko Superstar, and This One Summer, and for several prose works of fiction and non-fiction. In 2016 she began writing for both Marvel and DC Comics. She has twice been named a runner-up for the Michael L. Printz Award.
The Green Turtle is a superhero originally published by Rural Home Publications. He first appeared in Blazing Comics (1944), and was created by Chinese-American cartoonist Chu F. Hing. While the original run of the character lasted only five issues, the Green Turtle is notable for three factors. First, during WWII, the stories represented the Chinese in U.S. popular media as heroic partners fighting the Axis. One issue begins with the banner 美國及中華民國, and features a U.S. general joining Chinese guerrillas in battle. During the war, U.S. depictions of the Pacific theatre were typically racialized; the "Yellow Peril" stereotypes applied to the Japanese were originally anti-Chinese and portrayed Asians as racial enemies of Western civilization. Second, the character is often identified as the first Asian-American comic book hero. These factors inspired a contemporary graphic novel on the Green Turtle, Shadow Hero, by Gene Luen Yang, whose American Born Chinese was the first work in a comics format to be nominated for the National Book Award.
The Canadian Library Association Young Adult Book Award was a literary award given annually from 1981 to 2016 to recognize a Canadian book of young adult fiction written in English and published in Canada, written by a citizen or permanent resident of Canada.
This One Summer is a graphic novel written by Mariko Tamaki and illustrated by Jillian Tamaki published by First Second Books in 2014. It is a coming of age story about two teenage friends, Rose and Windy, during a summer in Awago, a small beach town. Rose and Windy discover themselves and their sexuality while battling family dynamics and mental disabilities.
Rosemary Valero-O'Connell is an American illustrator and cartoonist. She is known for her work with DC Comics and BOOM! Studios.
Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up with Me is a graphic novel written by Mariko Tamaki and illustrated by Rosemary Valero-O'Connell. It follows Frederica "Freddy" Riley throughout her struggles with her on-again, off-again relationship with the eponymous Laura Dean. The novel was first published by First Second Books on May 7, 2019. A young adult and lesbian teen novel, Laura Dean includes themes about teenage lesbian and queer sexuality.
Dragon Hoops is a nonfiction graphic novel by Gene Luen Yang, illustrated by Gene Luen Yang and Lark Pien, and published by March 17, 2020, by First Second.
Emmanuel Guibert is a French comics artist and writer. For his work, he has been awarded the French Ordre des Arts et des Lettres and the Grand Prix de la ville d'Angoulême.
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