Welcome back to another Small Press Spotlight featuring more excellent choices for middle grade readers. This week, we take an exclusive look at Alex Schumacher’s debut middle grade graphic novel The Ill-Effects of Pickled Herring, set for publication in September 2023.
Read the announcement recently featured in Publisher’s Weekly:
“Olivia Ngai and Jennifer Newens at West Margin Press have acquired world English rights to Alex Schumacher‘s middle grade graphic novel The Ill-Effects of Pickled Herring, pitched as Raina Telgemeier meets Jeff Kinney from a Jewish author-illustrator. It follows the tumultuous year-long preparation for introverted 12-year-old Micah Gadsky and his outgoing sister Alana’s joint B’nai Mitzvah (Bar and Bat mitzvah), as they struggle to make sense of family changes and their identities. Allison Hellegers at Stimola Literary Studio brokered the deal, for publication in September 2023.”
Schumacher has worked with 215 Ink, Viper Comics, and briefly as a storyboard artist for DreamWorks TV. His The Unemployment Adventures of Aqualung was published in 2013 by Arcana Studios, and other notable works include the weekly webcomic Decades of (in)Experience in 2015 and the monthly online misadventures of Mr. Butterchips in 2016. A collection of the latter was released in July 2020 by SLG Publishing and relaunched as a webcomic in May 2021.
Stay tuned for a first look at the graphic novel’s cover, and check out an exclusive sneak peek at a couple of panels from the book below!
