Ten-year-old Kabir Jnagal has uncovered a world of killer pandas, snow dodgeball and secret cave portals. They’re all featured in the Los Altos fifth grader’s debut comic book, “The Freaky, Killer Antarctic Pandas.”
“These pandas in Antarctica, they’re out for blood,” Kabir said. “And the main character, Bob, his mission was to find the pandas and create peace so that they don’t destroy the world.”
Published in August on Amazon, the 96-page book is a culmination of just over half a year’s work for the Springer Elementary School student. Inspired by his favorite comics “Dog Man” and “Calvin and Hobbes,” Kabir brainstormed the idea in February from a daily writing exercise with his dad.
“With my dad, we always wrote a few sentences a day about how the day went and then one day, he told me to write whatever I want,” Kabir said. “So, I wrote this idea on a Google Doc and I said, ‘Could I turn it into a book?’ And then it became this whole thing.”
Kabir and his father Amit Jnagal, a published author, then developed and edited the story together.
“I did a lot of thinking, then wrote it down in a notebook,” Kabir said. “If it felt good, I’d keep it. Or my dad would tell me to change it.”
At his peak, Kabir said he worked for about 90 minutes every day, including writing and editing.
“He would write a few pages every day, and he would run it by his dad,” said Meenakshi Jnagal, Kabir’s mother. “Reworking was something that he didn’t like very much, but he needed to learn to take and implement readers’ feedback, which he did.”
But his words on the page were only half of it – Kabir also needed illustrations to finish the comic. He opted for AI-generate images using ChatGPT, which created another learning curve – how to prompt the engine.
“That was probably the main struggle of writing the book,” Kabir said.
For example, Kabir had to write prompts specific enough to include exactly what he wrote about and deal with the technical difficulties of using the AI resource.
“This one image – and it’s very funny – where he needed a panda as a waiter … but the AI carried the waiter panda through all its images,” Meenakshi said. “There’d be a war going on and there’d still be waiter pandas in the corner. It was funny, but it was also very frustrating.”
Despite that initial setback, with practice, Kabir successfully generated illustrations to fill the comic.
“He was eventually pretty spot on with what he wanted them to be after the initial glitch,” Meenakshi said. “He did a good job feeding it what he expected out of it.”
With the completed comic now published and available for purchase online, Kabir has started receiving reader feedback.
“A lot of people from my school have read it, and everyone’s saying it’s pretty good,” Kabir said.
The success of “The Freaky, Killer Antarctic Pandas” doesn’t just motivate Kabir, though. For his mother, the product and process have been inspiring to watch him grow as both a writer and a thinker.
“He’s got this flair with words where he makes it very humorous as well,” Meenakshi said. “The current generation – and even he – has a hard time focusing on things because there’s so much online he can do. I think this process has helped him calm down, sit, write, focus and think hard.”
As for Kabir, he’s already thinking about what comes next.
“I want to take a break, but I already know what I want to write for the next book,” Kabir said.
The book is available in hard copy and on Kindle. For more information and to purchase the book ($5.99-$19.99), visit tinyurl.com/2n6t5dku.
