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Kate Lavut is also starting out. A writer and drawer, she moved here from Toronto several years ago and is raising young children. In 2010 she started self-publishing quirky little alphabet books on different themes- cellphone users, smokers, animals- and has also done a gender-bending series about the time she passed herself off as a boy in Mexico.

Like naive art, the hand-sewn, black-and-white books charm by their simplicity, off colour humour and lack of polish (the texts have multiple spelling mistakes).

With a new one coming out every two months, the books have sold at small-book fairs like Montreal’s Expozine as well as independent book stores and museum gifts stores here and in Toronto and San Francisco. You have to be a bit of entrepreneur to make a venture like this work, Lavut said. “For artists, it can be hard to do the business side as well as the creative side, but I actually enjoy the business side- the marketing, the production, keeping your costs down so you can be profitable.

John Kenney The Montreal Gazette

“Luckily this is breast feeding lingerie”
That says it all. In Sex After Baby, Lavut depicts a comical series of events to as Barry White would say
“Get It On”while an extremely vocal baby continually disrupts the proceedings.
Lavut exhibits excellent comic timing. Just when the metaphorical Barry White music starts playing and things start heating up, the baby interrupts with a poorly timed cry. All this is portrayed with Naive folk-art-style illustrations which lend themselves well to depictions of yowling babies.
Will the baby ever stop crying? Will the would-be lovers attempts at coitus stop being interrupts? Pick up the comic and you’ll see for yourself.

AG PasquellaBroken Pencil Magazine

Turtles in Girdles follows a group of sea turtles on a deep-sea adventure as they search for the jellyfish and crabs that make up their diet. Unfortunately, their journey is interrupted by a dangerous encounter with drifting garbage, which threatens to leave them stranded and unable to resurface for air. But as they escape this crisis, they meet others along the way who are similarly trapped.These interactions draw attention to the presence of non-biodegradable trash, like plastic bags, which pollute our oceans and cause severe consequences for marine animals. With some tension to lend the story a serious note of warning, the rhyming narration is soothing enough to be suitable for the youngest readers. The friendship that develops between different animals also emphasizes working together and helping out smaller species. Throughout the turtles’ journey, these animals model the kind of consciousness and helpful behaviour that humans can aspire to in creating a less-polluted planet. The book also seamlessly integrates some fun facts about ocean life and ends with a list of actions and approaches that kids – and adults! – can take to help keep the seas clean.

Montreal Review of Books