Written by Disney Files Magazine Editor Ryan March and illustrated by the multi-talented Disney Fine Artist and Member Cruise veteran Bret Iwan – best known to Disney fans as the official voice of Mickey Mouse – Camp Mickey & Minnie: One Wild Summer tells the story of Goofy’s well-intentioned but comically misguided attempts to manage Mother Nature as he helps Mickey and the gang prepare the camp for summer. Disney Files Magazine staff writer Jill Chabot Levin visited with Ryan and Bret to learn more about the book and its creation.
Ryan: It’s something Bret and I started discussing back when my preschool-aged daughter, whose love of Mickey and friends was rooted largely in Disney Junior animated series, was about to age out of those shows but wasn’t quite old enough to really connect with the zanier Mickey Mouse cartoon shorts that had become popular among tweens and teens. I wasn’t ready for her to say “see you real soon” to Mickey and the gang, and that’s when Bret and I started imagining stories that, while entertaining for all ages, would really focus on kids in that 6-9 range. It was around that same time that Bret started creating new screenprints through Disney Fine Art, placing Mickey in U.S. National Parks. The style of those prints has such warmth, and each piece manages to feel both elevated and approachable. I thought that, if we could bring new Mickey stories to life in that visual style, we’d have something really special.
Bret: It stems from my own lifelong love of National Parks. I love camping, I love exploring, and I love the art style that evolved from the WPA program. (Editor’s note: The Works Progress Administration was an ambitious infrastructure program that included employing thousands of artists in the creation of public art.) A lot of money was being invested in the 1930s and 40s into our National Parks, and the WPA program funded ad campaigns built around these gorgeous silk screen posters promoting the parks with simple yet evocative images of nature, brought to life through warm colors and rich textures. That was the inspiration for the Disney Fine Art prints Ryan mentioned, and that was the style we envisioned for this new series of stories for Mickey and friends.
Ryan: The notion of telling these stories against the backdrop of a wilderness camp has been there since Bret and I first talked about this idea over dinner on a Disney Vacation Club Member Cruise. We just needed the right window of opportunity to pitch our idea, and that window opened in the spring of 2020 – back when most of us were spending a lot more time at home. For my wife and me, the onset of the pandemic meant no longer taking our daughter – to whom I ultimately dedicated the book – down the street to Walt Disney World Theme Parks. We had to make our own magic at home, and we suddenly found ourselves going on nature walks around the neighborhood. We turned pinecones into birdfeeders in our trees. We planted milkweed in our flower beds so we could feed caterpillars and raise butterflies. And we weren’t alone. Around our neighborhood and around the world, kids – and kids at heart – were reconnecting with the magic of nature. It was the perfect time to pitch our story.
Bret (laughing): You’re asking the wrong guys. We’ve never done this before. Maybe we’re just slow. I blame Ryan. But seriously, it’s a meticulous process. As you can imagine, telling stories with Mickey and friends comes with an enormous weight of responsibility. It’s a responsibility I feel whenever I step behind a microphone to lend my voice to this character, and it’s one I definitely felt when Ryan and I set out to craft a new Mickey and friends story – something we’ve never had the opportunity to do. There’s such a rich legacy associated with these characters. Ryan and I are fans first, and we needed to get this right.
It was also important to us to connect kids with nature in a responsible way. While we wanted the story’s depictions of nature to be fun, we also had to be accurate. Fortunately, we had access to Disney’s Animals, Science and Environment team at Walt Disney World Resort. They were so generous with their time, agreeing to review every draft of our story, and providing notes that were invaluable.
So this really was a thoughtful labor of love – from every story beat to every color and texture in the illustrations. And the end result is something that I think we’ll be proud of for a very long time.
Ryan: I’ll answer that second question first. While being faithful to the world of Mickey and friends forced me to use some restraint in terms of real-world references, I may have dropped a couple of breadcrumbs along the way. Camp Mickey & Minnie has a roadway, for example, named Possum Path – which, let’s just say “coincidentally,” happens to be the name of a roadway loop at Disney’s Fort Wilderness Resort & Campground. And there’s a hiking trail in the camp called Timberline Trail, which may or may not have drawn inspiration from the address of Disney’s Wilderness Lodge on Timberline Drive. I actually wrote the first draft of the book sitting on a rocking chair outside Crockett’s Tavern at Disney’s Fort Wilderness Resort, and I made final edits near the fireplace in the lobby of Disney’s Wilderness Lodge, so those places were definitely top of mind as we crafted our wilderness story.
As for the story itself, Bret’s and my favorite Disney stories are those that play on more than one level, with the primary narrative delivering pure entertainment, and a subtext delivering a message we can all rally around. So that became our guiding principle. We wanted to tell a story that was, first and foremost, fun and entertaining – filled with the heart and humor that made us fall in love with these characters in the first place, but we also wanted the story to have purpose.
The story of “One Wild Summer” begins with Goofy looking to shoo frogs away from the camp’s lakeshore as he sets up his water-sports marina. As always, his heart’s in the right place, and he even consults his Wilderness Guidebook for solutions. But by scaring away the frogs with decoy flamingos, the mosquitos once eaten by those frogs quickly begin to flourish. So Goofy hatches his next big ideas, and each time he does, he inadvertently throws nature further into imbalance and creates the kind of comedic chaos we’ve all come to associate with Goofy’s best-laid plans.
So while it’s a story about summer fun and friendship, it’s also about the balance of nature and, on an even broader level, about the unintended consequences of ideas not thought through.
Inspired by his illustration work on Camp Mickey & Minnie: One Wild Summer, Bret Iwan created a new series of art pieces available through our friends at Disney Fine Art by Collectors Editions. His new, book-inspired pieces (which debuted at the EPCOT International Festival of the Arts) are titled “Camp Mickey and Minnie” (pictured right), “Goofy’s Water Sports” and “Seek Adventure.”
To shop for these and other Disney Fine Art pieces by Bret, visit DisneyFineArt.com and select Bret Iwan from the menu of artists, or simply click here. Enter DVC20 at checkout for a 20 percent Member discount!
