“The school readers my children brought home each week were quite dated, and my boys loathed reading them,” explains author and illustrator Kylie Howarth when asked about the idea for her graphic novel, Kev and Trev, Snot Funny Sea Stories.
“Both my boys are dyslexic, and to help make learning to read fun, I started writing short, funny, rhyming stories with unexpected endings. I’d write and illustrate them on an A4 page, fold them into mini-books and pop them into my children’s lunchboxes. They loved the stories and shared each edition with their friends and teachers who began reading them aloud to the class.”
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After sharing the ‘lunchbox minis’ on her Instagram account, Howarth, recipient of the 2024 WA Premier’s Book Award Writer’s Fellowship, was contacted by a publisher about developing the concept into an accessible book for young readers.
To date, Howarth had written and illustrated children’s picture books and chapter books, but designing a graphic novel was a new direction.
“The graphic novel format was a no-brainer, having spent many years reading with my own children and observing which books did and didn’t engage them. Both boys are dyslexic, so initially it’s the illustrations that draw them in, and then because graphic novel text is usually presented in small manageable chunks, they’re less afraid to have a go and start reading,” she explains.
Howarth spent a lot of time researching text design elements for Kev and Trev to ensure it was accessible for dyslexic readers.
“I’m extremely passionate about creating inclusive, approachable and engaging books for all readers. Many text design considerations can enhance the reading experience and allow text to be more easily read for beginning or neurodiverse readers. I paid particular attention to word choice, font selection, font size, kerning (the space between letters) and leading (the space between lines of text).” Kylie Howarth.
Howarth explains that while graphic novels and comics traditionally used all-caps, she decided that since her book would target beginning readers, she would use a font more closely resembling handwriting.
“It was important I set the text as sentence case using fonts that had a single-storey letter ‘a’ and ‘g’. For the short stories in Kev and Trev, I modified a dyslexic font to fit this criteria. Speech bubbles allowed the text to be presented in small chunks rather than large blocks, which is much more inviting to less confident readers.”
Despite Howarth’s desire to make her book accessible for dyslexic readers, it is not overt nor preachy, nor is it only for dyslexic or neurodivergent readers. One of the characters is dyslexic, but is relatable to all readers.
“Trev is a clever, resourceful marine iguana who is able to fix almost anything using parts and materials she finds in op shops. She is not specifically labeled as dyslexic but readers will notice that she often misreads words. Trev accidentally contacts a PUG-lisher rather than a publisher, which leads to an exciting ocean adventure after Tess (the puglisher) insists they include a story about merpugs. Trev’s mistakes are always embraced and treated as happy accidents,” Howarth explains.
The graphic novel shows the characters having lots of fun researching, writing and illustrating their stories and discovering a lot about the process of writing, editing and publishing along the way. Howarth hopes their journey might inspire children to create their own short stories or graphic novels, or be used in the classroom to learn about story creation, character design, the role of editor and publishers, the role of mistakes and conflict and many other elements of story design.
“Wouldn’t it be wonderful to have more book creators, publishers and designers become aware of all the design considerations that can help make books more readable and enjoyable for dyslexic readers? I’d also like to see resistant gate-keepers become educated on and open to the value of graphic novels for all readers.” Kylie Howarth
