SATA

• Lost Time ( Graphic novel) Razorbill (New York, NY), 2023

• Tas Mukanik website - http://tasmukanik.com/wp/

  as Mukanik (pronounced: “taz mechanic”–the last name is Ukrainian) is a queer artist living in Montreal, originally from Calgary. They live with their fiancee, Winter Jay Kiakas, who together run the small queer business Windy & Wallflower where they create comics together. Tas has worked on multiple projects, namely The Sanity Circus, Paint the Town Red and Augustine. Her debut published graphic novel is Lost Time, published by Penguin Razorbill in 2023. Her specialties are with pencils, flatting and colours. Her general interests are in dinosaurs and hot monster women, of which you can probably find traces of either (or both) in all her work.

  (pronouns: they/them or she/her)

  Represented by Jen Azantian at Azantian Literary Agency
  Contact for publishing inqueries: jen@azantianlitagency.com
  Direct contact: tm@windywallflower.com

• Windy & Wallflower - https://windywallflower.com/wp/

  Welcome to Windy & Wallflower!
  Hey there! If you’re here you’ve probably heard a little bit about us. Maybe you caught us on one of our many social media accounts or maybe you met us at one of our many conventions, either way, welcome to being here in our little corner of the internet!

  So what IS Windy & Wallflower? Well thanks for asking! We’re a duo of queer storytellers who go by Tas (Windy) and Winter Jay (Wallflower) who combined their two usernames into a funny little business. We hail from Montreal these days and spend so much of our time in our tiny little apartment hashing out stories great and small about characters of every shade of queer we can think of. The two of us are a bit obsessed with the craft of storytelling and are often pushing the boundaries of what a story even is and what they should even look like.

  Oh sure we have our staples, you’ll find our comics section is quite full up at the moment, but we have plans and plans and plans to push that envelope as far as we can. Sounds corny, maybe, but hey life’s too short to stay inside the box.

  So stick around! Have fun reading through everything on this website, we spent a lot of time crafting it and putting things together so that folks like you could have a place to hang out and take your time discovering the work that we make. We’re always super appreciative of those who take the time to give us a little read. You’ll find that a lot of our work is free to read online and those that aren’t we’ve tried to keep accessible the best we can. (We’re still a couple of artists who have to eat, y’know)?

  C’mon in and see what we’re all about!

• From Publisher -

  Tas Mukanik is a queer artist best known for her YA and adult self-published works, such as The Sanity Circus and Paint the Town Red. She has a keen interest in drawing fun characters with big expressions, as well as a fascination with birds, nature, and prehistoric life. Lost Time is her debut middle grade graphic novel. Originally from Alberta, she now lives in Montreal, where she and her partner jointly run Windy & Wallflower, an online business. You can see more of her work at windywallflower.com.

• School Library Journal - https://afuse8production.slj.com/2023/11/16/justice-for-pterosaurs-tas-mukanik-guest-posts/

  Justice for Pterosaurs: Tas Mukanik Guest Posts
  November 16, 2023 by Betsy Bird Leave a Comment

  Folks, you may have noticed that I haven’t been posting a lot of reviews lately. The fact of the matter is that once the end of the year rolls around, I begin to lose a bit of steam. That means that there are going to be loads of amazing 2023 books that I just wasn’t able to bring to your attention. Titles like Lost Time, the incredible middle grade graphic novel that has everything from time travel to baby pterosaurs to . . . well, here’s a description:

  “Jurassic World meets How to Train Your Dragon in this gorgeously drawn, adventure-packed middle grade graphic novel about a girl who gets trapped 65 million years in the past and must learn to survive with only her wits…and the pterosaur she befriends.

  Twelve-year-old Evie didn’t mean to get lost—especially in the Cretaceous period! Now she’s alone, without her parents or anyone else to turn to for help. That is until she rescues a baby pterosaur and raises it on her own. As the baby grows into a giraffe-sized flying reptile, which Evie names Ada, the two manage to to find a way to survive in the prehistoric wilderness.

  But Evie will have to risk everything when she makes a discovery that may just be her only chance of returning home. Putting Ada’s flying skills to the ultimate test, the duo must embark on a journey halfway across the world—battling all nature throws at them, from fearsome dinosaurs to raging storms. Will Evie manage to overcome all the odds and find a way back to her family… or is she truly lost in time?”

  It is legitimately a ton of fun. A good old-fashioned survival tale and a fun book to boot. So when Penguin Young Readers asked if I might like to host a guest post by creator Tas Mukanik, I said yes and please.

  SCROLL TO KEEP READING THIS POST
  ADVERTISEMENT

  So on that note, please join me in welcoming Tas and her piece on dino fascination:

  Tas Mukanik
  Like a lot of kids, I had a big dinosaur phase. I mean, who can blame them for having one? Here are some incredible giant reptiles, the perfect fuel for scaly movie monsters, but for once these monsters were actually real. I grew up in the 90s and early 2000s, where dinosaurs had a huge boom thanks to Jurassic Park and subsequent dinosaur media. And I certainly won’t lie that the scary movie monster variety of dinosaur pulled me in, and to this day I still enjoy a good exciting dino-monster. But it was the media that gave me insight on how these were real animals that really kept me plugged in to learning about dinosaurs and other prehistoric creatures, such as the enigmatic pterosaurs.

  My biggest dinosaurian obsession as a kid was BBC’s Walking With Dinosaurs, which used state of the art CGI of the time and practical effects to present a nature documentary about prehistoric animals. I was hooked on it—my parents taped it and I lovingly watched those tapes over and over. It was that show that had me saying my favourite dinosaur was Leaellynasaura, much to my poor teacher’s attempts to try and spell it for me. I also grew up in Alberta, which meant I was lucky enough to have frequent trips to the Royal Tyrrell Museum in Drumheller, one of Canada’s most extensive dinosaur museums. I was drenched in dinosaur stuff. I ate it all up.

  However, I also loved the fantastical, and dinosaurs were no stranger to that either, being so entwined with kids and learning. It was just as often you’d find an educational dinosaur book next to a cute kid’s book involving cartoon dinosaurs brushing their teeth. It was the fantasy that always drew me in—I would pour over the works of James Gurney in his Dinotopia books, where humans interacted and rode dinosaurs in lush painted artworks. I think that’s where I really found the love for pterosaurs, as they were featured prominently in those books, which was oddly rare when it came to any prehistoric media.

  Pterosaurs, or pterodactyls, are often mistakenly called dinosaurs. Which to be fair, they did live and die out with the non-avian dinosaurs, and although they aren’t a part of the dinosaur family tree, they’re closely related—kinda like the weird flying cousins. But where dinosaurs have had a renaissance lately, in terms of updating their visage in popular media to be more accurate to what we now know, pterosaurs often lagged behind. They’re like… the B-side of prehistoric creatures. Usually the set dressing, just to have something flying around in the skies. Which I don’t think does them any justice. They were just as unique, if not even stranger, than their dinosaurian cousins too.

  If you say “pterodactyl” the picture you probably bring up is a weird scaly or leathery bat-like prehistoric creature, usually with a crest, maybe with teeth and claws. In fact, pterosaurs were likely coated in fluff, and had a very diverse range of appearances and sizes. Some were barely as big as your hand, with frog-like mouths. Some had tall crests that were larger than their own bodies. And some were as big as fighter jets. They were also the first vertebrates to learn to fly, and unlike the modern-day dinosaurs, birds, they walked around on all four legs.

  SCROLL TO KEEP READING THIS POST
  ADVERTISEMENT

  I chose Evie to ride a pterosaur in Lost Time to bring some of that fun insight to life. Ada is a Quetzalcoatlus, which was one of the biggest pterosaurs, and likely one of the largest creatures to fly ever. When I was a kid, giant pterosaurs like Quetzalcoatlus were thought to have been sluggish, and needed to dive off of large cliffs just to get airborne. But this was based on what we knew about birds, and what the largest of birds need to take off. Modern research into pterosaurs has given us a new updated view of them as more active creatures, who could take off on their own power. Of course, perhaps that’s even more terrifying to know that a giraffe-sized flying reptile can take off into the air with just a little push of its legs.

  To me, learning about dinosaurs and prehistoric creatures is always a fun journey. Every year new research comes out, and every decade it seems we have more and more understanding, upturning everything we knew before. Even in my own fantastical stories about dinosaurs, I want to foster that fun imagination in what we believe now, and what more we can learn. So much has changed since I was young, and it’s great to see how new media reflects it, too. Apple’s Prehistoric Planet is a new generation’s Walking With Dinosaurs, and includes a lot of wonderful focus and updated depictions of pterosaurs. I also think it just opens the door to so much more interesting ways to design them: we’ve seen the same reptilian dinosaurs and pterosaurs for decades, but what if we could make them weirder and fuzzier? Not only is it unique, it’s also more accurate to what we know!

  Not everyone is going to be interested in the educational stuff, but I don’t think that means it should be entirely excluded from the fantasy. Because dinosaurs, and all their weird cousins—they were real animals at one point. To me, that makes them so much more tangible, and exciting, than just any old monster.

  Huge thanks to Tas for this piece and to Jenna Smith and the folks at Penguin Young Readers for proposing it. Tas Mukanik is a queer artist best known for her YA and adult self-published works, such as The Sanity Circus and Paint the Town Red. She has a keen interest in drawing fun characters with big expressions, as well as a fascination with birds, nature, and prehistoric life. Lost Time is her debut middle grade graphic novel. Originally from Alberta, she now lives in Montreal, where she and her partner jointly run Windy & Wallflower, an online business. You can see more of her work at windywallflower.com.

MUKANIK, Tas. Lost Time. illus. by Tas Mukanik. 240p. Penguin/Razorbill. Oct. 2023. Tr $22.99. ISBN 9780593327036.

Gr 5 Up--Evie is accidentally thrown back in time to an era where dinosaurs roam the earth. She discovers and grabs an egg, and when the creature hatches, they instantly bond. Along the way, she stumbles on a man-made shelter that once housed other time travelers. With her new dinosaurlike friend, Ada, and the recordings left behind, Evie adapts and learns to survive. But she misses her moms terribly and knows that she must figure out how to get back to them. The fantastic artwork, with bright and vivid illustrations of prehistoric creatures, will charm middle graders. The expressive colors, detailed drawings, and panoramic scenes of a beautiful and undeveloped Earth create a magnificent adventure. VERDICT Young readers will thoroughly enjoy this story.--Esther Keller

Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2023 A wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
http://www.schoollibraryjournal.com/
Source Citation
Source Citation
MLA 9th Edition APA 7th Edition Chicago 17th Edition Harvard
Keller, Esther. "MUKANIK, Tas. Lost Time." School Library Journal, vol. 69, no. 10, Oct. 2023, p. 81. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A766727743/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=170709ae. Accessed 16 Feb. 2024.

Mukanik, Tas LOST TIME Razorbill/Penguin (Children's None) $22.99 10, 3 ISBN: 9780593327036

A child separated from their moms by more than 60 million years shares adventures with some Mesozoic companions.

Suddenly surrounded by lush greenery after getting trapped in a time machine, Evie--androgynous in appearance and drawn in the clean-lined, richly colored art with big, expressive eyes--is frantic to get a message back to Mom and Mama. Fortunately, an abandoned exploratory base nearby provides shelter and recordings of a previous research team's logs. Unfortunately, the nearest temporal communicator is at another base, far away. But some time later, having raised Ada, a towering Quetzalcoatlus northropi, from a hatchling to a full-grown, flying pterosaur, Evie has the means to get there, fashioning a saddle and setting out on a soaring journey over Cretaceous landscapes for encounters with a colorful, carefully detailed cast of dinosaurs and dino cousins (all identified in an appended portrait gallery) and narrow escapes from natural disasters and toothy predators alike. Along with being laudably resourceful, Evie has a real way with animals; not only is the relationship between small child and intelligent, airplane-sized buddy palpably affectionate, but an injured young T. rex that Evie nurses back to health peaceably sticks around long enough to chase off a gang of smaller raptors and startle Mom and Mama when they at last rush in for a joyful reunion. One parent shares Evie's coppery brown skin and glossy black hair; the other parent reads Black.

Delightfully improbable adventures plus dinosaurs galore! (Graphic science fiction. 8-11)

Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2023 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Source Citation
Source Citation
MLA 9th Edition APA 7th Edition Chicago 17th Edition Harvard
"Mukanik, Tas: LOST TIME." Kirkus Reviews, 15 July 2023, p. NA. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A756871976/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=d724b87b. Accessed 16 Feb. 2024.