The story
The concept for Toon Books came to Mouly when her son Dash was learning to read, and his first-grade teacher assigned him "easy readers". Appalled by the lack of appeal of the educational material, Mouly instead spent time with her child and armloads of French comic books. In fact, one of the first Toon Books releases was Agnès Rosenstiehl's Silly Lilly, a.k.a. Mimi Cracra, a comic-book character familiar to millions of French toddlers.
After proposing the Toon Books idea to major children's books publishers from 2004 to 2007, and being rejected because the proposed books didn't fit existing categories, Mouly returned to her roots as a self-publisher — she had founded her small press, RAW Books & Graphics, in 1977, and RAW Junior in 1999. As she had done for the avant-garde comics and graphics magazine RAW, or the kids comics anthology Little Lit, both of which she co-edited, or for the covers of The New Yorker, Mouly gathered an array of talent for Toon Books.
2008 saw the launch of eight titles, featuring star authors (such as Harry Bliss, Art Spiegelman or Jeff Smith), veteran children's book authors (Geoffrey Hayes) as well as novice cartoonists (Eleanor Davis, the author of Stinky, was still in art school when Mouly contacted her). The initial line of titles received glowing reviews and multiple awards, prizes, and distinctions. Upon Toon Books' debut, Publishers Weekly characterized the line as having the potential to revitalize the field of comics for kids: "Françoise Mouly is at it again. After transforming American comics with the seminal 1980s comics anthology RAW, Mouly is now out to teach kids to read by using comics".
In fall 2012, Toon Books released its first Toon graphic novel, The Secret of the Stone Frog, by David Nytra. Two years later, Toon Books launched an imprint called Toon Graphics aimed at readers eight and up.
From Wikipedia’s article on Toon Books, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.3