Little Island Comics

The first children’s comic shop in North America, maybe worldwide!

by Lina Vergara Huilcamán

A colourful bookshop, with shelves within children’s reach and a huge variety of titles, not only comics but also albums by illustrators who have something to do with comics, as is the case of the recent Hansel & Gretel by Lorenzo Mattotti with Neil Gaiman published by Toon Graphics. “It works well,” says Peter “but our sales are not limited to the shop, we sell a lot to institutions like schools and libraries. Some teachers come here to have a closer look at the books before buying them. We try to fulfil all kind of needs, to make promotional activities and focus on quality, and even when a book is not selling well, if it is a good book we try to keep a copy. Often our suggestions and proposals depend on the teacher we are dealing with. Some of them are interested in kids and in developing their interests, but others are simply desperately looking for a comic book on a certain topic, and sometimes we are forced to give them boring books, because they are the only ones we have on that specific subject. We try to get near to what both teachers and children want. To do our best. Doing this work we notice that children really wish to read comics but some adults don’t understand it, because they have never read them, but when they see the kids’ interest they change their mind. Teachers come here because we take care of our targeted-readers, the kids, and we always try to find new different comics, different materials also from other countries. Other shops often focus on one genre and don’t vary a lot, while we have very wide-ranging interests, we dare say, here as it has always been at The Beguiling.”

Thanks to Peter and the girls at Little Island Comics for the time they dedicated to me on the 11th December 2014.

Little Island Comics
742 Bathurst Street
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
mail@littleislandcomics.com