“Meet Emilie Billaud: the Teacher-Turned-Comic Book Author”

She is a teacher by day and a comic book author by night, or almost… Emilie Billaud released its new comic strip last April: “Journal d’instit”. It’s already his 4^e work after the trilogy “My life as an institute”.

“By dint of training, I have progressed”

Three-quarter-time teacher for CE1, CE2 and CM1 in a small primary school in Angers for 15 years now“Emy Bill”, of his pseudonym, embarked on the adventure of comics eight years ago, being completely self-taught. “I have always loved, drawn and painted. My mom was a college art teacher, and being an only child, it was my way of keeping busy. But apart from a Literary BAC plastic art option, I never took a class »she explains, before adding that her trait “has evolved a lot, I’ve groped a lot, I trained on the Internet thanks to tutorials on YouTube, and, by dint of training, I progressed. » And the illustrator assures her, her graphic style has evolved since all these years of training.

The author explains that she works on a tablet, always starting with a draft, then inking with a black outline: “then, I like to color, I play on the shadows, my drawings are quite colorful, quite fresh, with endearing children’s faces »she tries to decipher.

Thanks to her many anecdotes gleaned during her rich experience, Émilie Billaud has already produced four books on the theme of schooling. While “My life as an instit” rather proposed independent stories on each of the pages, “Journal d’instit” takes place over a longer period of time, focusing on the teachers’ room: “I invented a school with a totally fictional team of teachers. We integrate the master room with the team of teachers and ATSEM who meet at several times of the week and share their anecdotes. So we have lots of little stories about what teachers can experience, and some let go a little. » 90% of the story are drawn from his personal story, and the narration is intended above all “humorous, without hitting anyone. »

A profession less and less recognized

The objective of his works is therefore to make people smile, but also to highlight the daily life of teachers, often misunderstood or caricatured. Emy Bill confesses that “We find it more and more difficult to get recognition from people, we get a lot of slap on the wrist. And often those who do it don’t know our profession very well, and think that as soon as we are no longer in front of our students, we no longer work, whereas obviously, a class is being prepared, copies are being corrected. This is also what I like to do in my comics: show the hidden face of the mistress and what is not known to reveal the truth to the general public. »

Émilie Billaud does not refrain from continue the story of “Journal d’instit” with future volumes since she still has several new themes in mind. But first, the Angevine must come out a graphic novel next year on a more serious subject, that of school bullying.