I’ll admit it, I’m a recreational reader. My favorite books are the ones that make me laugh or cry, but don’t require me to think much beyond what is on the page — much the same way most people watch television. Sure, when I’m reading to review or for committee work I read with eyes [...]
Like spring flowers, titles are popping up all over the list this week. Bongo Comics has a new trade for Bart Simpson fans, while Boom! Studios releases the trade Walt Disney Treasury featuring Donald Duck. Marvel Comics gets seasonal with their latest Super Hero Squad trade, and Oni Press has the next issue of Courtney [...]
I grew up with a variety of heroes. Writers like Roald Dahl, Tamora Pierce, Andre Norton, Ray Bradbury, and Susan Cooper led me deep into the world of stories, speculative and wondrous. Itzhak Perlman, a virtuoso violinist, amazed me by playing so brilliantly with enormous hands. Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly astounded me with their [...]
On Sunday, May 8th, while attending the Toronto Comic Arts Festival, I had the opportunity to speak with some of the people who made the festival possible. Keep in mind, conventions are crazy loud and crazy busy, so there is a lot of background noise. Let me know in the comments if you have trouble hearing anything and I’ll translate for you.
Merriweather Lewis and William Clark set off from Saint Louis in 1804, looking for a water route west to the Pacific Ocean. Along the way they had to battle rapids, avoid entanglements with the British and the French and various Native American tribes, climb mountains they hadn’t expected, maintain troop morale, and face their own [...]
It’s hard to believe, but it has been five years since First Second burst on the graphic novel scene with a lineup that included Lewis Trondheim’s A.L.I.E.E.E.N., Grady Klein’s The Lost Colony, Emmanuel Guibert and Joann Sfar’s Sardine in Outer Space, and Sfar’s Vampire Loves. That fall they really got on the map with Gene [...]
Over at The Huffington Post, author Charles London tackles a question that’s been on many educators’ minds of late: how can teachers and parents encourage boys to read more? His argument is that boys are readers, but the kind of material that appeals to them often falls outside the canon of approved kid-lit. “Even when [...]
The first Choose Your Own Adventure novel was published in 1976 by Vermont Crossroads Press. Though Sugarcane Island sold only 8,000 copies, author Edward Packard was convinced that interactive novels could be a big hit with proper marketing and distribution, and spent four years shopping the concept to major publishers. In 1980, he signed an [...]
Over the weekend I, along with fellow Good Comics for Kids contributor Eva Volin, attended the Toronto Comic Arts Festival (aka TCAF) in Toronto. As Eva mentioned in her anticipatory post, TCAF had been a biennial occurrence until last year when the organizers took a leap and made it an annual event. I attended last [...]
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