Little Women Reimagined — Alcott’s Classic Comes Alive with Comic Book Style

Roberto Martinez is launching a business that reimagines classic books in exciting and colorful ways. He chose Little Women because of its heritage. It was only after he read it for the first time that he understood the magic of Louisa May Alcott’s bestseller, and the secret of its longevity.

Roberto Martinez is an Educational Psychologist turned Software Engineer who loves classic literature and comic art. Out of those passions, BookWormHole was born: a publishing house focused on classic books.

“At some point I started collecting comic issues, and I fell in love with the playfulness and surprise of each cover, he said. “Sometimes the cover reflects the story inside, sometimes it’s an homage to a famous painting, and often the publisher changes artists; so the characters never look quite the same twice.”

“Now, combine that with the fact that many classics were originally published as serials, and suddenly cutting a book into Slices (slim booklets) makes a lot of sense,” he said. “They’re lighter than a heavy tome, the font is bigger, they feel less intimidating to start reading, and together they turn even one novel into a little collection.”

The very first project is Little Women (Part I), published in 7 slices.

A reading helper with all the difficult words in each page and maps, images of the things referenced.

For the folks who like community, there will be a cozy little book club online to geek out about the story.

And then there’s the memorabilia, because a favorite book is like a vacation:

• 5 recipe cards(blanc-mangé, pickled limes…).
• 7 posters
• 1 postcard
• 1 notebook

“BookWormHole is about helping readers enjoy the classics in a way that’s easier to pick up and harder to forget.”

I asked Mr.  Martinez more about his project.

1. Why Little Women? When did you first read it and why has it so tickled your fancy? How familiar are you with the Alcott family?

I did some research about the most printed books with more film adaptations to decide on the first book. At the end I had Pride & Prejudice vs Little Women and I have never read any of them, just watched the films and I loved Gerwig’s one. I started reading Little Women and right on the first page, at the end, it finished with  “said Jo, who was a bookworm”.  That sealed it, I took it as a sign, matching the name of the publishing house. By the way, this project is a bunch of hunches.

Then I read the book, and oh boy! I wasn’t prepared for it. It felt more contemporary than more classics: the structure mimicking Pilgrim’s Progress; how sometimes it is a book, then a newspaper, then a telegram, a play, a letter; gender issues with phrases that could have been written these days; girls playing a make-believe that felt like Dungeons & Dragons from their time; and discovering things that are never represented in the movies. I thought it was the perfect book to start the collection as it was always changing.

I’m not familiar with the Alcott family, beyond a Wikipedia review. I took a Boston up-down bus some years ago and there were some Louisa May spots, but we missed Orchard House, maybe for the next trip!

2. Explain to me the birth and vision of your company — how did it all begin? What made you decide to do an anime version of Little Women, and then include the extras that make the story come alive?

Basically I’m a nerd, the bookish type but also the comics type and we’re legion!

Now, for people who are not familiar with collecting comics, let me say a comic book cover is very similar to a song cover, it’s often the main character interpretation by the invited artist, it is recognizable but it has a very particular flavour, think about all the “Hallelujah” versions. And sometimes it is not just a new way of drawing, but also a nod to something, like a rock album or a cereal box.

And I love literature and I wanted that variety and… marvel. The current illustrated versions or even the graphic adaptations have just one style/illustrator. And that feels very “canonical” for me, like editors deciding this is it. I wanted a buffet of playful takes. So I just decided to fund it and see if this resonates with people.

We have some tenets in BookWormHole

Books are places

Books mark us, they define who we are, reading something could be more impactful than a real life trip to some place. And that even if we have travel souvenirs, we don’t have that for books. I think books should be treated like those real places, and have memorabilia. This idea is reflected in our WPA style souvenirs.

Classics are common ground

During centuries classics have been humanity shared memories. In these times, where the content choice is so abundant and nobody follows the same tv show, classics are a way to relate with others. Also knowing your classics makes the other content more fun.

The packaging matters

Industry keeps packaging classics in a ceremonial way, like they don’t belong to our times. But I suspect there’s a market that wants something more exciting, fun, surprising and relatable.

Metamodernism is here

Classics are basically modern thinking, or at least the kind of stories that produced our modern age. After decades of gloomy postmodernism, optimism is back with metamodernism and I think that’s a very fitting way to sell classics. Because even if you haven’t read Frankenstein or Little Women, you may have an idea of what it’s about. So when we’re creating a cover, “we know that you know” and that’s a pretty cool position as we can be self-referential and tongue-in-cheek and all of the things that metamodernism is about (this video was my primer “Why Do Movies Feel So Different Now” and probably explain why I love Gerwig films). We’re selling modern stories with metamodern packaging or as we say “classic core, magic shell”.

3. When you did your test marketing, did you engage young people only or adults as well? What was the reaction?

Oops I didn’t test marketing. I think our Kickstarter campaign will be our test. I’m developing this for adults that embrace their inner child, but not for kids. However, the recipes are something cool to do with kids though.

4. What is your ultimate goal with Book WormHole? How did you come up with the name?

Let’s start with the name. Remember that books are places? Well, reading a book is like wormhole-traveling to another universe. Also bookworm and wormhole fit our 2 sides, the nerdy and the geeky, the core and the shell.

Ultimate goal is that BookWormHole becomes the destination for classics. Not just a store, but a hub to enjoy these books, we’ll have a reading helper and a book club for true fans (not for reviews). And there are lots of ideas beyond the current offer.

Now, for the medium term, what I can say is that I want to publish the top 100 classics, that’s probably 1000 slices, 500 recipes and dozens of artists.

But for the short term, the eyes are on the first Kickstarter campaign .
BookWormHole  is about helping readers enjoy the classics in a way that’s easier to pick up and harder to forget.

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