Books
The New England-based author of “Nat Enough” has been able to mine enough humor out of pre-teen trauma for five graphic novels — with a sixth on the way.
Reading through Maria Scrivan’s “Nat Enough” graphic novel series — she’s written and drawn five for Scholastic/Graphix since 2020, with a sixth on the way this spring — one thing quickly becomes clear: Middle school must have been pretty rough for Maria Scrivan.
Fortunately for her, the New England author and cartoonist has been able to come to terms with the turmoil of early adolescence by filtering it through Natalie, her books’ sixth grade protagonist, and a colorful collection of supporting characters. (Unlike most of us, who simply have to wallow in whatever cringeworthy middle school memories we have festering in our subconscious.)
“It’s funny, because although she was based on my childhood self, she’s taken on a life of her own — which has been really fun to watch, and it was also really good for me to look at these really horrible experiences,” says Scrivan from her home in Greenwich, Connecticut. “It was really fun for me to kind of go back to things that were not at all funny in the moment, and now look at them through humor and with humor.”
Since getting her start with her hilarious single-panel comic “Half Full,” which is syndicated nationally by Andrews McMeel Universal, Scrivan has thrown herself into her graphic novel work, and the result seems to have been as much fun for her readers as for herself: 2020’s “Nat Enough” was an instant New York Times bestseller, and the series’ popularity has only grown since.
Scrivan recently sat down with Boston.com and Strip Search: The Comic Strip Podcast to talk about cartooning, graphic novels, and surviving middle school.
Boston.com: First of all, you’re a fellow New Englander. How are things in Connecticut?
Maria Scrivan: Born and raised! Yeah, I didn’t get too far. I grew up in Greenwich. I went to school in Massachusetts, though — I was [at Clark University] in Worcester for school, and then I came back to Greenwich. But yeah, it’s gorgeous. I think September is my favorite month in Connecticut, because it’s still warm, the leaves are just starting to change, we start to go to the apple farms. It’s a great time.
What inspired you to become a cartoonist in the first place? How did that happen?
So that was a childhood dream come true. All I ever wanted to do in my life was be a cartoonist. When I was little I would read the Sunday funnies from start to finish, every Garfield book that came out, I would read it, and I would study it, and I knew all I wanted to do was become a syndicated cartoonist.
I started out with magazines. And then actually, I started out going to the New Yorker, and I went every Tuesday. I didn’t get in [the magazine], but then I had a stack of comics, so I went and pitched [those] to syndicates. It was kind of neat that it worked out that way because I love colorful things and bright colors. It was a perfect fit for me to be in the newspaper, and I think my 8-year-old brain blew up the first time I saw my comic in the newspaper.
You’d go into the office at the New Yorker to show your stuff?
Yeah, I would go, and what I loved about that was I went every Tuesday because I’m right in Connecticut. So it’s a quick train ride. I went every Tuesday, and it would be this amazing group of cartoonists. And then afterward we’d go out to lunch. So I got to hang out with Sam Gross, who became such a mentor to me. Unfortunately, he passed away. But he was so amazing, and I learned so much of the business just watching these guys at lunch and hearing them talk about everything.
When you were first starting out, were you always in the mindset of doing a single panel, as opposed to, say, a strip with characters like a “Peanuts”?
I don’t know exactly why I was drawn to that, but I really love the challenge of a single panel, because every time it’s different. It’s a different scene. It’s different characters. And you have an entire story to tell in one panel. And it’s really challenging, because you can never rely on what a character is going to do. So it’s such a contrast to the Nat books, because it’s a character, I know how she behaves. I know how her friends behave. So you sort of get some input from the characters in a way, as you’re working on it, and the single panel is very different. But I love them both. They’re both challenging in their own way, which is really fun.
In the Nat books, her cat and dog are sort of like a Greek chorus for the story, and you’re able to incorporate some of that non-sequitur humor there. But obviously it’s propelled by the story of Natalie in her middle school adventures. If you’ve been to middle school, you will definitely cringe at some of the things that Natalie goes through.
Right, and they were my own personal experiences — pretty much everything Nat went through, I had also gone through. … You know, like falling flat on your face in the hurdle — I’ve got this great photo that I show in school talks of me, my face is like two inches from the ground. I don’t know how my dad caught that photo, but I was mortified when I saw it. But now I love it because it’s so hilarious.
All the Nat books have themes of self-love, self-worth, moving through fear. But I kind of buffer that with humor. So the weight of the topics gets diffused a little bit.
Reading the first book I found myself really hating Lily, Nat’s former best friend who dumps her to hang out with the popular girl. Because you really tapped into something there that’s realistic.
She is pretty cruel. Lily is really not a specific person. She’s kind of an amalgam of, like, the worst traits of … frenemies, I guess, from middle school, and [Nat’s] best friend Zoe is kind of like the best traits of my favorite friends and people rolled into one. There’s a letter from Lily in the book — I got a similar letter from someone in middle school, you know, you’re a big jerk, whatever it says. And I had to tone it down. I wrote down basically what I got, and my editors were like, that’s too mean. So it was very realistic.
You’ve done five Nat books so far including the first one in 2020, and now there’s a sixth one coming.
The sixth one, called “Nat A Chance,” is coming out in the spring … that was definitely based on my childhood. Nat does not think she’s an athlete. She gets picked last for gym, and there’s this one scene where, you know those football tackle dummies? The only people left to choose are Nat or a tackle dummy, and they’re like, can we get the tackle dummy?
So poor Nat, you know, doesn’t think she’s an athlete, and then sort of gets roped into doing a triathlon with her best friend, Zoe. It’s a very similar story to my life — as an adult I ended up doing triathlons, but the whole book is about the stories we tell ourselves about who we are or what our capabilities are like. I’m bad at math, or I can’t sing. And what happens when you challenge these beliefs and these stories that we tell ourselves.
What else is going on in Maria’s cartooning world that you can tell people about?
I’m working on some pitches, one for younger readers and one for adults, because I just love the graphic novel format. And now I have so many stories I want to tell. I feel like I’m just getting started now.
Listen to the full conversation with Maria Scrivan — including insight into her writing and drawing methods, and her reflections on contributing to the “Marvel Super Stories” collection — on Strip Search: The Comic Strip Podcast, below:
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