Kate Beaton Facts for Kids

Quick facts for kids Kate Beaton
Beaton at the Calgary Comic and Entertainment Expo in 2011
Born	(1983-09-08) 8 September 1983 (age 41) Inverness County, Nova Scotia, Canada
Notable works	Hark! A Vagrant Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands
Spouse(s)	Morgan Murray (m. 2018)
Signature

Kathryn Moira Beaton (born September 8, 1983) is a Canadian comics artist. She is famous for creating the webcomic Hark! A Vagrant, which was popular from 2007 to 2018. She has also written children's books like The Princess and the Pony (2015) and King Baby (2016).

In 2022, her book The Princess and the Pony was turned into an Apple TV+ show called Pinecone & Pony. Kate Beaton helped make the show as an executive producer. Also in 2022, she released a graphic novel called Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands. This book shares her real-life experiences working in the Alberta oil sands before she became a well-known artist. Publishers Weekly magazine even called Ducks one of the top ten books of that year.

Early Life and Education
Becoming a Comic Artist
Personal Life
Images for kids
See also

Early Life and Education

Kate Beaton grew up in Mabou, a small town on Cape Breton Island in Nova Scotia, Canada. She has three sisters. She went to a small school from kindergarten all the way to grade 12, with only 23 students in her graduating class.

In 2005, she graduated from Mount Allison University. She earned a degree in history and anthropology. While at university, she started drawing comics for the school newspaper, The Argosy. After college, she worked as an assistant at the Maritime Museum of British Columbia in Victoria.

Becoming a Comic Artist

After finishing university in 2005, Kate Beaton worked at an oil sands mining project in Fort McMurray. She did this to help pay off her student loans.

In 2007, while still working at the museum, she decided to share some of her history-themed comics online. She posted them on her own website, katebeaton.com, and on a LiveJournal blog. Her comics quickly became popular, especially those based on ideas from her readers.

Hark! A Vagrant Webcomic

Kate Beaton created and published her webcomic, Hark! A Vagrant, from 2007 to 2018. She moved her comics to a new website, also called Hark! A Vagrant, in 2008.

Her comics often featured funny takes on historical figures like James Joyce and Ada Lovelace. She also drew about characters from classic Western literature. Sometimes, she even drew herself in her comics. People loved her simple drawing style, especially how she showed feelings through her characters' faces. She was also praised for how well she told stories in her comics. Hark! A Vagrant won the 2011 Ignatz Award for Outstanding Online Comic.

Published Works and Recognition

Kate Beaton's work has been featured in popular magazines like Wired and Maclean's. In 2009, her comic "The Origin of Man," which celebrated Charles Darwin's 200th birthday, was shown by MySpace Dark Horse Presents.

In June 2009, she released her first book, Never Learn Anything from History. Many of her cartoons have also been published in The New Yorker magazine. In September 2011, Drawn & Quarterly released her second book, also titled Hark! A Vagrant. Time magazine called it one of the top ten fiction books of the year, with writer Lev Grossman saying it was "the wittiest book of the year."

Her self-published book Never Learn Anything from History won the 2009 Doug Wright Award for Best Emerging Talent. Hark! A Vagrant won the 2011 Harvey Award for Best Online Comics Work. In 2012, she won three more Harvey Awards for Humor, Online Work, and Best Cartoonist.

In 2014, Kate Beaton uploaded a five-part webcomic called Ducks. This story was more serious and complex. It was based on her own experiences working at a mining site in Canada.

Her collection of Hark! A Vagrant comics, called Step Aside, Pops, became a bestseller on The New York Times graphic novel list in October 2015.

Children's Books and Graphic Novels

Kate Beaton's first children's book, The Princess and the Pony, came out in 2015. The next year, in 2016, she published another picture book called King Baby.

In October 2018, she decided to stop regularly publishing her webcomic. She felt that the project had reached its natural end.

In September 2022, Kate Beaton released her graphic novel memoir, Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands. This book shared her personal story of working in the energy industry before she became a cartoonist. It was an expanded version of her earlier 2014 webcomic. The book won the 2023 edition of Canada Reads, a national book competition. The American Library Association also listed Ducks as one of their top ten Best Graphic Novels for Adults in 2022.

Personal Life

Kate Beaton at NEWW, wearing a Remembrance Poppy

Kate Beaton is married to writer Morgan Murray. They have two children. After living in New York and Toronto, Kate Beaton now lives in Nova Scotia with her family.