Comic Art Museum - Brussels

The Belgian Comic Strip Center (BCSC) is delighted to welcome to its Gallery Ada and little sister Rosie, the heroines created by Dorothée de Monfreid for her first comic strip album!

This selection of original humorous storyboards illustrates the talent and originality of this family adventure. Having until now worked primarily on children’s books, the author here delivers an original take on day-to-day life and paints a picture of a family and an era. 

The BCSC has great pleasure in sharing with its visitors her simple, amusing and pertinent interpretation of the world, with the added bonus of a sculpture created for the occasion. Many thanks to the artist!

Mélanie Andrieu, the Belgian Comic Strip Center

A blasé young schoolgirl, an interfering little sister, overwhelmed parents, existential angst, a large modern city, organic vegetables, a hyper connected world: Ada & Rosie recounts the ups and downs of the daily life of a modern family.

Most of the album’s storyboards were initially published on the blog hosted on the Libération website. To replicate them in the album, the author reduced the panels from four to three, condensed the dialogue and created brand new boards to tie it all together. She fine-tuned the details and explained her methodology: “On the blog the weekly posts appear randomly. I don’t plan the order in writing or in my head. A book is a standalone work and requires some adjustments. I set myself some constraints, for example the seasonality spans a school year and the stories are grouped by theme.  Then came the formatting. I rewrote a few scripts and recalibrated some storyboards, matching the colours. Ultimately, I always aim for shorter and better”.

A graduate of the Paris School of Decorative Arts (Ecole nationale supérieure des Arts décoratifs),  Dorothée de Monfreid has written more than 50 books for children and adults, which have been translated into 21 languages. Most have been published by l'école des loisirs, Gallimard (Super Sauvage on CD) and Hélium (Tendance Chat). She has contributed to the Mon lapin quotidien (l’Association) journal since its creation and was a member of the now defunct L’Atelier Mastodonte (in Spirou magazine). Since 2017, her Ada & Rosie comic strip series has recounted the day-to-day life of a modern family on the website of Libération newspaper. 

Les Éditions Casterman

With the support of the Bruxelles-Capitale Region