Funds for Bookworm are provided in part by Lannin Foundation.

Boots!

Where would we be without books?

Where would we be without good?

No to bird.

It's a rhetorical question, sir.

But where would we need without books?

From KCRW and KCRW.com, I'm Michael Silverblatt, and this is Bookworm.

Today, I'm excited to have, as my guest, a first-time graphic novelist. Now listeners know how rare I have a guest on with

the first book. But this book, my favorite thing is Monsters by Emil Ferris is a, well, it's a phenomenon.

It's quite amazing.

It's volume 1, 386 pages of a two-volume graphic novel from Fantagraphics. And it's in the form of a child, a girl's notebook,

a three-hole punch-lined notebook. And so what we're looking at really is not quite a cartoon strip.

It's Karen Rays, is her name, notes that come because she can't bear most of her life.

She's in love with monsters and monster comics,

and that's because she feels herself to be a monster.

And she reads the cartoons, the comic books about herself, monster comics, with titles like ghastly.

What are some of the others?

Dread, spectral, yeah, true terror tales.

And she loves to copy their covers.

In particular, she identifies with the Wolfman.

Why?

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