Hey, Kiddo

"I’m going to talk about this interesting new intersection between audiobooks and graphic novels, because it is a very interesting alignment. It’s not brand new. If you know The Invention of Hugo Cabret , that a big fat book that won the Caldecott Medal in 2008 for its illustrations—how do you change all those illustrations into sound? Years ago, the audiobook of it was incredible. It recreated the book. That same phenomenon is occurring now with full cast audiobooks that are made from graphic novels. “Especially if we’re going to be home together for a few weeks or months now, it’s good to have something to discuss with your teen.” Moving on to our winner this year, Hey, Kiddo is an amazing book. It won the Odyssey Award, which is given by the American Library Association for the best audiobook for children and teens—and it was originally a graphic memoir. The author worked with Scholastic Audio to recreate the book so that you could ‘hear’ the images with the full cast. One thing that’s also really appealing is that there are children’s voices doing children’s parts. A youth listener will strongly identify with those youth voices. There’s also a couple of other graphic novels/memoirs that have been turned into audiobooks with a full cast. Another one is New Kid , which won the Newbery Medal this year. I’ve done interviews over the years with the producers and narrators of books that have won the Odyssey Award, and many of them, oddly enough, are from books that have strong illustrations or graphic content. What many of them say is that having an image as well as words on a page really helps them round out the sound of the book because they can see it. They can portray it in sound even more."

"“Everybody’s already dead” is Grandpa Joe’s rationale for teaching his grandson, Jarrett, to drive in a cemetery, and it sets Hey Kiddo up perfectly. This is Jarrett Krosoczka’s 38th book — but his first memoir, and it’s full of the humor, the tension and the reality of being raised by grandparents because your mom is addicted to heroin. Woven throughout are actual artifacts from his own childhood — drawings exchanged with his mom in prison, artwork from high school, photos, wallpaper, all of which give it gorgeous texture and poignancy. The takeaway is that Grandma Shirl, Joe, Jarrett and the rest of the family muddled through … with some yelling and some cigarettes and lots of love."

"Mary: Hey, Kiddo was a National Book Award finalist as a graphic memoir, recognising the literary power of Krosoczka’s personal story of his mother’s heroin addiction and childhood with alcoholic grandparents. It’s told from the point of view of Krosoczka at age 17, and teens forge an immediate connection with the author’s description of how his artistic talent helped him survive his upbringing. Krosoczka co-produced the audiobook with Scholastic Audio’s Paul Gagne, creating a labour of love where the work was literally rewritten and reshaped into a new aural work."