Best Children’s Book, 2015 Maine Literary Award
Young Joe Livingston has a very active imagination! And when his favorite Aunt goes missing, he and his family journey through the wilds of Maine to rescue her from the clutches of Cracker—The Beast of Briney Bay!
Adventures in Vacationland~Signed Copy
Written by Mark Scott Ricketts
Binding: Hardcover
Pages: 40
Genre: Children's Picture Book
Ages: 6-10
ISBN: 978-1-939017-16-1
Publication Date: 2014
Dimensions: 9.0 x 11.0 x 0.38
Shipping Weight: 1.06 lbs.
Mark Scott Ricketts is a Maine-based Arkansas-born illustrator who has enjoyed national success in advertising, graphic novels, and comic books, including as author of several Iron Man comics. Ricketts published A Flatlander’s Guide to Maine with Islandport Press in 2013, and Adventures in Vacationland in 2014.
Ricketts was born in Stuttgart, Arkansas, in 1955, the son of the proprietor of a fast food and soft serve establishment called The Dairy Creme. He attended Arkansas State University in Jonesboro where he studied painting under landscape artist Roger Carlisle. Ricketts moved to Chicago in 1979 to start a band, but also worked there as a freelance illustrator, a talent he developed into his career. He got his big break as a writer and illustrator in 1990 when Caliber Comics agreed to publish his first book Warpwalking. In 2000, Image Comics published Rickett’s graphic novel Nowheresville, a mystery set in 1950s Greenwich Village that combines Beat Generation culture with hard-boiled pulp crime fiction. Nowheresville is Ricketts’ most successful book. Ricketts created many original graphic novels at Image, including Night Trippers and Dioramas which was optioned by Venture Studios. He also created a graphic novel for Dark Horse entitled Lazarus Jack and wrote four issues of Marvel's The Invincible Iron Man for the Avengers Disassembled event. In 2000, Ricketts won the Klasky Csupo (Animators of Rugrats, Duckman, Wild Thornberries) Screenwriting Contest.
Ricketts and his wife moved to Maine in 2006. He continues to work as an illustrator for national publishers. For two years, he also wrote and self-syndicated the comic strip, Moose Mountain.
In the News:
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5 Questions with "Adventures in Vacationland" Author Mark Scott Ricketts
(June 3, 2015)
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"Ricketts’s style is vibrant, bright and engaging.... it [the story] allows Rickets to really do what he does best – draw some iconic Maine stereotypes in ways they’ve never been seen before. He takes on the rough roads, black flies and Galloway cows all through the eyes of a precocious kid. His artistic style alternates from the bright clean lines and graphic novel styles, to a sketch style representative of Joe’s top-secret journal, with marginalia that is insightful and hilarious."
—Katy England, The Maine Edge
