Pretty Ugly started gestating back in the ‘90s. I had two small kids and was always searching for things to read with them. Comics have been a lifelong passion for me, and I wanted to share them–especially with my son, who was taking his own time learning to read and adored French-language bandes dessinées like Tintin. It was another reminder of how valuable comics can be for fledgling readers: they helped me improve my English when I moved to New York from France. But I found that there were few, if any, good contemporary English-language comics for kids. I decided to make a collection of comics for children—as my husband, Art Spiegelman, the author of Maus, and I had done for adults with our flagship graphics magazine, Raw. This was the genesis of Little Lit. I called upon everyone I knew: Maurice Sendak, Barbara McClintock, Jules Feiffer, Neil Gaiman​, Gahan Wilson, Posy Simmonds, Richard McGuire, and so many more.

At the time, I had also been hired to be the art editor of the New Yorker. I had a mandate to visually rejuvenate the magazine, to bring in new artists. It’s there that I discovered, through an unsolicited submission, the work of Ian Falconer, a painter and a gifted designer for theater and ballet. In 1996, I published Ian’s first cover, not just for the New Yorker, but for any publication, the first of more than thirty covers the two of us would collaborate on for the magazine.

Ian had shown me a children’s book about a little pig he had developed for his niece, Olivia. After the first few covers, many publishers approached Ian with offers to illustrate a children’s book, but most turned down publishing him as an author. They said, “No, you’re just the artist. We’ll hire you to draw, but we want an established writer.”
However, one publisher took a chance on Ian, and we all know what happened next ... Olivia!

The final piece of Pretty Ugly’s​ creation fell into place when Ian mentioned that he wanted to bring a friend to an end-of-year New Yorker party: David Sedaris. Sedaris was beginning to make an impact with his hilarious musings on NPR and was hoping for more exposure for his writing beyond the one-page humor piece he had managed to place. But instead of mingling and networking as he had intended, David spent the entire time goofing off with Ian and me in my office, where we could smoke as long as the door was closed (It was a different time!)

I liked the pair of them so much that I asked David and Ian to contribute something as a team for Little Lit. They went off and came up with a classic fable—Pretty Ugly. I was ecstatic. I loved that the story was a true collaboration between the two, told visually, not just a series of captioned pictures. The page turning was so much fun! We were all excited to see Little Lit hit shelves. But a week before its publication, the September 11th terrorist attack happened, and everyone’s priorities shifted, with Little Lit the last thing on anyone’s mind.

The idea of giving Pretty Ugly the chance it deserved was on my mind when I started TOON Books. More recently, in light of the widespread campaigns to control what children read by banning books, I felt it was urgent to publish a book so viscerally funny, so irreverent of piety. In 2021, I asked Ian and David what they thought. They were excited by the idea, and I began working on the new layouts, completing the book’s design last year, prior to Ian’s passing.

To be publishing Pretty Ugly without Ian’s presence is bittersweet. I miss him and I wish he could have been here to see young readers fall in love with Anna Van Ogre. One of the last communications I received from him was a voicemail he left me after receiving the print out “dummy” I’d sent to him and David: “Hi Françoise. It looks great. I have no complaints. I can’t wait to see it bound … and gagged.”

Françoise Mouly, Editorial Director, TOON Books