What did you do with your summer? Any illegal activities?
I have drawn many cartoons about kids in school being asked to write about their summer. It’s a schtick that one can manipulate ad infinitum. It conjures up feelings of childhood and school insecurities—always good for a smile or chuckle. Cartoons take a given in life and twist it, that’s what makes for the laughter (sometimes). If you make it about something we have pretty much all have experienced, even better. Then make it about something that is cringe-worthy, uncomfortable, vulnerable, then you might get something really good.
This one below was in The New Yorker a while back.
One more about kids and writing, and specifically about kids writing for Hollywood, the one below was one of the first color cartoons that The New Yorker started to run in the 1990’s. They have since stopped running single panel cartoons in color, and returned to only black and white, one of the signature features of a New Yorker cartoon.
Since more and more people are trying their hands at writing for the screen, these cartoons might hit home even more now than when I drew them. Back then, it was not normal for a child to be writing a treatment or a screenplay.
Now, I might venture to say that there are seven year olds doing just that.