In the last six months, VIZ Media and Yen Press have both launched iPad apps to great fanfare, but they aren’t the only manga publishers in the digital comics game. Seven Seas, home to such properties as Dance in the Vampire Bund, Gunslinger Girl, and Toradora!, recently began offering Kindle editions of their global manga. [...]
Most of the titles in the VIZKids line fall into one of two categories: manga for younger readers (e.g. BakeGyamon: Backwards Game, Happy Happy Clover, Pokemon) or chapter books based on popular shonen series (e.g. Dragonball, Naruto). Next month, VIZ will be adding a new format to its kids’ line, one that falls somewhere between [...]
Kids love ghost stories, but a lot of manga featuring supernatural beings and vengeful spirits are too violent, gory, or sexually explicit for young readers. This month’s column focuses on two spooky titles that are better suited to middle school students than, say, The Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service or The Ring. Up first is The [...]
Graphic novels are an excellent tool for combating the well-documented “summer slide,” encouraging kids to practice their reading skills while reminding them that reading can be a fun, pleasurable activity. Last month, my colleague Esther Keller helped the Good Comics for Kids team assemble a summer reading list that offered parents and librarians suggestions for [...]
This month’s column marks a sad milestone: the last time I’ll be writing about a new or recent kid-friendly title from CMX. Throughout its six-year existence, CMX licensed a variety of titles for readers in the eight-to-twelve range. And while some of these titles bordered on the insipid, many were excellent, offering kids age-appropriate stories [...]
The latest installment of Good Manga for Kids focuses on two titles for the under-twelve crowd: Dinosaur King (VIZ) and The Lizard Prince (CMX). Despite their similar titles, Dinosaur King and The Lizard Prince couldn’t be more different. The first is a shonen (boys’) manga featuring time travel, talking dinosaurs, and evil scientists intent on [...]
Happy New Year! 2009 proved an excellent year for kids’ comics in general and kids’ manga in particular, as our end-of-the-year round-ups attest. (See The Best Comics for Kids 2009 and A Kid’s Best Manga List of 2009, co-authored by my colleague Lori Henderson and her ten-year-old daughter Krissy.) Among last year’s highlights: UDON Kids [...]
Welcome to the August edition of Good Manga for Kids! The column has been on hiatus for a few months, as most of this summer’s new kid-friendly releases fell into one of two categories: ongoing series that have already been reviewed at Good Comics for Kids (e.g. The Big Adventures of Majoko, Happy Happy Clover, [...]
This month’s column focuses on three new series: Ben 10 Alien Force (Del Rey), a manga adaptation of the popular Cartoon Network show; Dinosaur Hour! (VIZ), a series of short stories about the Jurassic era’s dimmest denizens; and Leave it to PET! (VIZ), a comedy starring a robot made out of a recycled plastic bottle. [...]
Last year, UDON Entertainment announced that it would be launching a new line of kid-friendly manga, to debut in April 2009. Acknowledging the paucity of titles for the under-twelve set, Chief Operating Officer Erik Ko promised to deliver “captivating,” age-appropriate stories in a variety of genres. I’ve had a chance to read two series from [...]
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