Edinburgh Is Reading Jekyll And Hyde

Previously mentioned here on Down The Tubes, the 2008 One Book - One Edinburgh citywide reading campaign is now in full swing. After the success of Kidnapped in 2007, this year's book is Robert Louis Stevenson's Strange Case Of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.

The original novel was re-released in a new version with an introduction by author Ian Rankin, Book Group reading notes by Prof Ian Campbell and including sketch illustrations by Cam Kennedy. These sketch illustrations were from the graphic novel version of the title adapted from Stevenson's original by Alan Grant, illustrated by Cam Kennedy, and coloured and lettered by Jamie Grant.

10,000 copies of the text novel were given away free throughout the city as well as the novel and graphic novel being heavily promoted in the cities bookshops. Various talks and workshops took place throughout the city with Grant and Kennedy attending signings for the graphic novel version, many of which are illustrated here.

The City Of Literature website has many activities associated with the release of the book and these include Creating A Comic. The two sections in this allow you to see if you could adapt Stevenson's original prose better than Alan Grant in Turning A Book Into A Graphic Novel, while From Inks To A Full Colour Comic lets you see if you could do the colouring and lettering better than Jamie Grant. It is worth remembering that Jamie Grant had four different versions of the text - English, modern English, Scots and Gaelic - to fit into those text boxes and speech balloons.

The campaign has been well covered in the media, with the Metro having their own PDF version of the book free to download with full text and colour illustrations by Cam Kennedy.

The Strange Case Of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde is available from Amazon as a text novel and as four different graphic novels in English, modern English, Lowland Scots and Scots Gaelic. Down The Tubes suggests that if you are not sure which version of the graphic to choose to try the English version rather than the modern English version.