Writing a book is hard. Writing and illustrating a children’s book with original characters that appeal to kids and adults alike is harder. Turning that children’s book into a pop-up book with hidden paper engineering is ridiculous. And morphing all of that into an untraditional carousel-style book binding is – alright, I’m starting to get stressed out.
But that’s exactly the monumentally daunting task Yekaterina Komarovskaya and Mike Ficarra took on with Young Puffin’s Wonderfully Grand Mystery, a new children’s book that ticks all those boxes.
The book centers on the eponymous avian hero who sets off to find a growing list of lost items in a Victorian manor house. The story may be a quirky mystery, but the biggest reveal happens right when the reader opens the book.
As a carousel book (also called a star book), Young Puffin opens a full 360 degrees, and rotating the book as a whole moves the story along. Each page is stuffed with little details and mechanisms to reveal new story details. And it took quite a long time to make.
Based out of Indianapolis, co-creators Komarovskaya and Ficarra first met while they were in college at Indiana University – Purdue University Indianapolis. Young Puffin began as a senior thesis project for Komarovskaya, and she reached out to Ficarra about collaborating. Ficarra then came up with the concept and character designs. From there, Komarovskaya developed the story and took on the bulk of the legwork, consulting Ficarra when she ran into roadblocks.
The project evolved into a pop-up book, and later into a carousel-bound book after Komarovskaya took a binding class with Bloomington-based instructor Karen Baldner and got familiar with the technique – and its challenges.
The book's hero (in plush form) sits next to the book stretched out in its carousel binding. (Photo: Elise Rorick)
“[You have to] scale it up and figure out the math behind each panel. That took some doing,” Komarovskaya said. That doing involved plenty of consulting with engineers and mathematicians, plus lots of trial and error. In order to make the book as interactive and dimensional as possible, the design had to be clean and precise.
About three years of work later, Young Puffin was ready to be seen on shelves. But there was a problem: Each copy was being cut, bound and stitched entirely by hand. Rather than a product they could share with as many people they wanted, Young Puffin was a rare, expensive product.
Komarovskaya and Ficarra needed help, and they needed funding. That’s where their crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter came in. With the money raised, they could take advantage of factories and manufacturers to make more copies more efficiently.
The cover of "Young Puffin's Wonderfully Grand Mystery" (Photo: Elise Rorick)
“At that point, we knew that we could make it accessible, lower the price point so it wasn’t a difficult collector’s item,” Ficarra said. “All the work was ready to go, and we were really somewhere where we just needed to pull the trigger.”
Fortunately, with just a little more than a week to go, the Kickstarter has already met and greatly exceeded its funding goal. At the time of writing, eager readers have pledged just under 250 percent of the original target.
That safety net is a huge weight off Komarovskaya and Ficarra’s shoulders. While the book could have moved forward without succeeding on the platform, the huge financial hit that the co-creators would have sustained is no longer there. Instead, they’re focusing on stretch goals, like additional merchandise and future projects.
Komarovskaya and Ficarra’s crowdfunding success isn’t the closing of a chapter (forgive the metaphor). The duo has another children’s book releasing later this year called Ani and the Grumpus – not a pop-up book, so they should have some time to breathe. It’s a project they’ve been working on for about as long as Young Puffin, with Mike leading on the story.
While the work on that book marches on, Komarovskaya continues with her day job making art for commercial goods. Ficarra works as a freelance artist, where he’s currently putting together an instructional comic for the Indiana University School of Medicine to help pediatric leukemia patients combat neuropathy; his other project, “Clockwork Companions,” is a series of drawings of steampunk-inspired animals made to help out animal rescue groups.
For more on Young Puffin’s Wonderfully Grand Mystery, you can check out the project’s remaining time on Kickstarter or the book’s website. And to learn more about Komarovskaya and Ficarra, you can visit their websites.
How else can art be used in storytelling? Listen to the WFIU Profiles interview with comics writer and illustrator Gene Yang.
