Princess and the Pony Creator Kate Beaton Discovers the Universal Link Between Charming Kids, Adults
(Fart Jokes.)
Photo by Notker MahrThe best children’s books are written from an original point of view. Margaret Wise Brown, author of Goodnight Moon and The Runaway Bunny, not only channeled her strong personality and unique perspective into her work, but also proposed the tenet that children’s literature was designed to “jog [the reader] with the unexpected and comfort him with the familiar.” And so Kate Beaton enters our scene with The Princess and the Pony, her first picture book outside of comics. Best known for Hark! a Vagrant —her compilation and website comprised of historically-detailed cartoons both silly and insightful—Beaton does what she wants to do, avoiding any ideas market-researched to death.
In Princess and the Pony, she takes a beloved character from her comics, informally known as “fat pony,” and gives it a 40-page arena to shine. That authorial strength of character is precisely what makes the book delightful. It is cute. It is weird. It is heart-warming. It is full of farts. It is just what you would expect from Beaton, but not without surprises. Despite a busy book tour, she answered some of our questions over email about the book, the pony, sweaters and princesses.
Paste: With all the many things you do and have done (history comics, Strong Female Characters, autobiography, mystery-solving teens, Canadiana), why do you think people like the pony so much?
Beaton: I think people like all things round and cuddly! Isn’t that why we like babies and decide to keep them even when they are pooping and not letting us sleep? We are conditioned to like the little fat things with big eyes, of the world.
The Princess and the Pony pages 7, 8.
Paste: It’s not even in that many strips and yet, as you have mentioned, it is one of your most requested characters. Do people ask you to draw it at cons? Does anyone have a Fat Pony tattoo?
Beaton: People do ask me to draw it at cons! So that’s good, because I have it down. If anyone has a tattoo they haven’t showed me, but I hope it is not in a sexy place if they do.
Paste: Can you talk a bit about the process of creating a longer narrative like this, as opposed to your usual shorter work?
Beaton: There is just a lot more second guessing and editing. A whole lot more.
Paste: How did you decide a princess was necessary?
Beaton: Even though princesses are marketed to them, there is something very true about a kid being obsessed with princesses—it is their decision. I think that a princess is this young person with the ability to make choices, and she is someone people listen to, take seriously. She can decide what she wants to do, wear, eat, basically she has a lot of power. So I can see why children like them. Every kid would like to be “the boss,” which is what a princess offers.