My Favorite Cartoon and Animation Books of 2025

and some animated films to watch or watch out for

2025 was a banner year for cartoon book collections and animation enthusiasts. Here are my reviews of three books that I found particularly impressive.

AFTER DISNEY by Neil O’Brien (Post Hill Press/Simon and Schuster) https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/After-Disney/Neil-OBrien/9798888451380

This is, in my opinion, the best book about the Disney studio published in this decade. It begins on December 15, 1966 as Walt Disney dies in St. Joseph’s Hospital and describes the studio’s trials and tribulations over the next forty years—the Animation Renaissance, the Silver Age of Disney Animation, several near-shutdowns, hits and misses at the box office, the greenmail attempt of the Eighties, unlikely executives (H.R. Haldeman, anyone?) and the infighting between Disney family members. Disclaimer: I was interviewed for it and fact checked the section about Cal Arts. Neil O’Brien is a superb writer. The book reads like a novel and is completely objective—probably because O’Brien doesn’t come from an animation background and has no preconceived opinions.

BERYL by Joanna Quinn and Les Mills (Graffeg Press, Wales)

https://graffeg.com/products/beryl?_pos=1&_sid=360c24d4d&_ss=r

Joanna Quinn has produced outstanding hand drawn animated films for forty years, and BERYL is named for her favorite character. Beryl is middle aged, overweight, and has big dreams. She has been a housewife, a factory worker, a hopeful documentary filmmaker, and in AFFAIR OF THE ART, a wannabe artist. Quinn found her unlikely heroine while still a student at Middlesex Polytechnic, London, where she also met Mills. This book is a wonderful description of how, and why, animation is created. There are biographies of Quinn and Mills, breakdowns of the animation process, revisions to story and storyboards, scripts, and hilarious stories such as the one about the unlikely ‘studio’ Quinn had to create in hours to impress a visiting commercial client. BERYL is a joyous tribute to hand made art at a time where major studios are attempting to replace creative people with robots. Beryl is a refutation of all squeaky-clean princesses and ‘perfect’ female heroines. Quinn loves to draw bodies—she is the Daumier of animation—and her films are poignant, funny, and feminist without being didactic. Additional bonus: There are animated sequences (AR, not AI) on several pages that can be accessed from the book via your phone. Graffeg will ship directly, but it’ll cost ya. (and it’s worth every dime.) It can also be purchased on amazon’s UK site.

PATRICK CHAPPATTE and ANN TELNAES: CENSURE EN AMERIQUE (Censorship in America) Les Arenes, Paris

https://arenes.fr/livre/censure-en-amerique/

Political Cartoonists are an endangered species in more ways than one. They take the same risks as print journalists, and are sometimes casualties of war.

This book is about two casualties of censorship and ‘obeying in advance.’ Pulitzer Prize winning cartoonist (and animator) Ann Telnaes quit the Washington Post when the editor censored her cartoon of the billionaires, including WAPO owner Jeff Bezos, bowing before Trump, whom she draws as a huge, malignant lump. She won a second Pulitzer for the same cartoon. Patrick Chappatte was fired from the New York Times after drawing another cartoon about Trump. His story is less well known, and an eye opener.

The book was published in October and some of the datelines for the enclosed cartoons are from August. It is beautifully designed. The text, which is only available in French, consists of a series of interviews of Chappatte and Telnaes. The cartoonists discuss the figurative and literal stamping out of opposing opinions in editorial cartoons, and why a picture is worth a thousand words.

A disturbing fact: There is no English edition of this book. It can be ordered through FNAC, France’s largest bookstore. My copy arrived in two days.

This is an important book. I got all three books as a holiday gift for myself.

And finally: Animation.

I don’t know about you, but I couldn’t get through more than 30 seconds of the trailer for KPOP DEMON HUNTERS. Some call this ‘great’ animation. It is not.

Two filmmakers with new hand drawn projects are Bill Plympton, whose SLIDE received a theatrical release this week, and Sylvain Chomet, whose new film A MAGNIFICENT LIFE is an animated biography of French multimedia artist Marcel Pagnol. I am really hoping that it plays theatrically in Toronto, since Chomet does best on the big screen. He makes beautiful, detailed films. I saw SLIDE in a festival screening, and while it is a bit crowded in the story department the artwork and characters are genuinely interesting. It’s the story of a ‘mysterious stranger’ with a slide guitar who reforms a Western logging town that worships money.

It is a political cartoon.

And since I’m not a Luddite I’ll mention the upcoming CGI sequel to ZOOTOPIA from Disney. The original film was charming, funny, and beautifully made and I am really looking forward to the sequel of a film that was crying out for one.