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Writer and Illustrator blast off with a 12-book series By Laura T. Ryan Sunday Syracuse Star, September 19,1999 Any world that pairs Bruce Coville With Tony Sansevero is a world that makes sense. Even one inhabited by evil hamsters, disembodied brains, and purple sixth graders. Just about every day, the men head into their laboratories-Coville into a dark second floor office, and Sansevero into a bright, airy studio splattered with color. Coville sits at a keyboard and minds his imagination for stories that blend classic classroom tales with outlandish alien creatures and landscapes. Then Sansevero inches the fantasies closer with vivid illustrations. The collaboration has produced two books, I Was A Sixth Grade Alien (Minstrel Books, $3.99) in August and new to bookstores this month, I Was A Sixth Grade Alien; The Attack of the Two Inch Teacher (Minstrel Books $3.99). The Third installment, I Lost My Grandfathers Brain comes in November. Nine more volumes follow; in an ambitious twelve book series that features a new book every month from here on out. The two will celebrate the second books release—and help raise money for Success By Six—with a combination book signing/ alien party at 7 p.m. Friday at Barnes & Noble in Dewitt. The party is a product, Coville says, of Sansevero's "fertile brain and excess energy," and will include aliens and alien abductions, prizes and video of the book series companion T.V. show, which airs on Fox Family Channel at 5 p.m. Tuesdays. Coville and Sansevero live and work in the same city, share a singularly sick sense of humor, and off-beat passion for 1950's science-fiction and get the same gleeful twinkle in their eyes when talk turns to extraterrestrials. Their partnership seemed inevitable, but in fact was a stroke of luck. Authors rarely choose their illustrators. Usually, the publisher picks the artist for the project and acts as a liaison between the writer and artist. But when Coville heard Sansevero, a Boston native, talk about illustration during a local book signing, he knew he found a natural and told his publisher so. The publisher asked to see Sansevero's work and hired him. "I was very impressed because he really knew his stuff," says Coville, who grew up in Phoenix. "He has in his blood this passion for the science-fiction genre." Rather than communicate slowly through a distant intermediary, Sansevero and Coville trade ideas in person, usually over lunch at the Dinosaur Barbecue. Sansevero bases his drawings on photographs of real-life models, including New York school children, whom he coaxes into wearing some bizarre alien costumes and facial expressions. The photos serve as a basis, and then Sansevero embellishes. For instance; Jonathan LaSalla, a perfectly normal-looking 10-year-old from Jamesville, transforms into Pleskit, a bald, purple alien kid with an antenna; Amy Bartell, a local artist, morphs into a giant evil hamster named Mikta-Makta-Mookta, and a tennis ball in a coffeemaker carafe becomes a bodiless brain in a glass case. Even Coville gets a piece of the action. Later in the series, look for him as a villain with a beard full of octopus-like tentacles. |
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