Congratulations to fellow Toon Books author Geoffrey Hayes, who won this year’s ALA Theodor Seuss Geisel Award. Four additional Geisel Honor books were named, and Little Mouse was one of them. Below is the official press release from Toon Books.

The American Library Association just announced its 2010 awards: they rewarded the very small publisher TOON Books (which published 3 books last year) with two of its top prizes. The ALA’s Theodor Seuss Geisel Award for most distinguished beginning reader goes to Benny and Penny in The Big No-No! by beloved author and artist Geoffrey Hayes who said: “Winning the Geisel is especially meaningful to me as I spent much of my career focusing on easy readers and trying to promote children’s literacy. To receive an award named after one of the giants of children’s books is a tremendous honor.” A second TOON Book, Little Mouse Gets Ready by Jeff Smith of BONE fame is one of four Honor books for the Geisel. Last year a Geisel Honor was awarded to Stinky, by talented newcomer Eleanor Davis (Stinky was Davis’ first book, started while she was still in school.)

“Even though the speech balloons and the visual storytelling inherent in comics are great for children learning to read, nobody had ever published comics for kids that young before. Starting a new publishing venture in 2008 was quite a challenge! When I offered the TOON Books to major publishers, they all said: ‘It’s a wonderful concept, beautifully executed, but we’re not in a position to start a new category,’ ” recalls TOON Books’ Editorial Director Françoise Mouly (who’s also the Art Editor of The New Yorker.) “So I decided to publish myself; the Geisels and all the other awards the TOON books have gotten are deeply gratifying.”

The TOON Books collection of innovative easy-to-read comics, designed and vetted for beginning readers, was launched in the Spring of 2008. For a start-up publisher to have such a strong presence in the ALA awards is testament to the special quality of these ‘“lovingly produced and winsomely written (Time Out)” hardcover beginning readers, and to the inspiring role comics can have in turning young children into life-long readers. In their Toon Treasury of Classic Children’s Comics, an anthlogy for all ages published by Abrams’ ComicArts last fall, Mouly and her husband, Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Art Spiegelman, write: “The once disreputable comic book confidently strides into bookstores, museums and universities cleverly disguised as the upwardly mobile ‘graphic novel.’ ” …And now sweeps the major awards for early readers at the ALA!

Frantically trying to keep up with the sudden demand, TOON books just announced that it’s reprinting the award-winning Benny and Penny in The Big No-No! and Little Mouse Gets Ready as well as advancing the publication date of Geoffrey Hayes’ latest Benny and Penny book, The Toy Breaker, to April 6, 2010. April 6 is also the release date for Zig and Wikki in Something Ate my Homework, TOON’s first science-based early reader comic (http://toon-books.com/book_zig_about.php), so that two new TOON Books will join the current list of nine books at the same time as the reprint of the award books.

For review copies and more information, please visit: www.TOON-BOOKS.com