New GC4K Core Title List and Superhero Comics for Children

When the peeps at the Good Comics for Kids blog published their first core title list, I think I called it the most helpful thing on the internet that month.  Well, it's been updated!  And in addition to pointing you to the new list, I wanted to break out one category and look at the choices.

So let's look at superhero and commercial properties (by which I mean characters owned by companies and depicted across platforms, like Transformers, Avatar, Ninjago).  I want to look at this category, because it's still an overlooked and sometimes maligned category.  Although we know how important these action series can be in the development of readers, I think librarians get nervous about buying series that might just be thoughtless spin-offs of games and TV shows. 

For example, there's a new Avatar GN written by Gene Luen Yang.  Gene Luen Yang, people!  I assumed the librarians would be all over that.  But there isn't a single copy in a public library in RI.  Apparently, a fear of comics featuring commercial properties is stronger than the power of a Printz winner's name recognition.

There are also fewer real comic-y comics published for kids.  Although kids love to read superhero comics, as a school librarian, I only buy comics that are intended for children, and that really narrows the field. That's why I think it's important to know which GN featuring popular characters are worth buying, because there are good ones out there, and they mean a lot to some of our readers.

Here's what the GC4K contributors recommend for grades 3-5:

Baltazar, Art and Franco. Tiny Titans series. Illus. by Art Baltazar. DC Comics.  2009-ongoing. 5 vols.

Fisch, Sholly. The All-New Batman: Brave and the Bold, vol 1. Illus. by Rick Burchett. DC Comics, 2011. 128p.

Star Wars Adventures series. Various authors and illustrators. Dark Horse. 2009-ongoing. 4 vols.
Star Wars Clone Wars Adventures series. Various authors and illustrators. Dark Horse. 2004-2007. 10 vols.

Transformers Animated series. Various authors and illustrators. IDW. 2008-2010. 13 vols.

Walker, Landry Q. Supergirl: Cosmic Adventures in the 8th Grade. Illus. by Eric Jones. DC Comics, 2009. 144p.

I want to briefly note for purchasing purposes that some of these DC titles will be available in hardcover through Capstone this fall, and the Star Wars hardcovers are available through ABDO (Spotlight). 

So there you go: a focused list with which you can introduce kids to important characters in the American canon.  Add to that the Marvel picture books I reviewed and you've got a nice superhero collection for young children. I'd add the Ralph Cosentino books, too, actually--especially for the Wonder Woman book.  And whatever you do, don't skip the Star Wars, because it features characters of many colors.  (I haven't read all of the others, so I'm not saying they don't.)

Now I'm going to take my own advice and get the Transformers GNs for my library.

Eisner Nominations

Here are the ones I care about:

Best Publication for Early Readers (up to age 7)
Beauty and the Squat Bears, by Émile Bravo (Yen Press)
Benjamin Bear in Fuzzy Thinking, by Philippe Coudray (Candlewick/Toon Books)
Dragon Puncher Island, by James Kochalka (Top Shelf)

I'm thrilled that Dragon Puncher Island has been nominated. It's one of the most delightfully weird books I bought for my library this year, popular across grades. If you haven't read the series (the first one is just called Dragon Puncher), it involves a catlike creature who hunts dragons and a small furry creature who wants to be the catlike creature's sidekick. What the furry creature brings to the table: a spoon, called spoony, with which he will beat the dragons.

Nursery Rhyme Comics, edited by Chris Duffy (First Second)
Patrick in a Teddy Bear’s Picnic, by Geoffrey Hayes (Candlewick/Toon Books)

Best Publication for Kids (ages 8-12)
The All-New Batman: The Brave and the Bold, by Sholly Fisch, Rick Burchett, and Dan Davis (DC)
Amelia Rules: The Meaning of Life ... And Other Stuff, by Jimmy Gownley (Atheneum)
The Ferret’s a Foot, by Colleen AF Venable and Stephanie Yue (Graphic Universe/Lerner)

I was thinking about Colleen Venable's Guinea P.I. series last night as I read one of the Joey Fly Private Eye graphic novels. Unfortunately, reading the Joey Fly GN was like reading one of those kids activity books about fire prevention or Halloween safety. It wasn't even trying to teach me anything, but the heavy handed narration made me feel like I was supposed to learn something. Maybe in this case, it was a lesson in the P.I. trope. Anyway, Guinea P.I. is the opposite: Hilarious! Kids can love a grumpy guinea pig solving mysteries whether or not they get the noir motif.

Princeless, by Jeremy Whitley and M. Goodwin (Action Lab)
Snarked, by Roger Langridge (kaboom!)
Zita the Space Girl, by Ben Hatke (First Second)

Zita the Spacegirl is another favorite from this year. Something crashes out of the sky and presents Zita and her friend with a remote control that has one tempting red button on it. Zita presses it and her friend rockets to another dimension. When I think of the book, the first image that pops into my head is Zita hiding in the woods, hugging her knees and crying, right before she goes back to the scene of the crash and pushes the button again, following her friend into the unknown.

Best Publication for Young Adults (Ages 12-17)
Anya’s Ghost, by Vera Brosgol (First Second)
Around the World, by Matt Phelan (Candlewick)
Level Up, by Gene Yang and Thien Pham (First Second)
Life with Archie, by Paul Kupperberg, Fernando Ruiz, Pat & Tim Kennedy, Norm Breyfogle et al. (Archie)
Mystic, by G. Willow Wilson and David Lopez (Marvel)

Read all about it ...

Now I really need to get my hands on a Princeless. Usually I wait for a TPB, but this one has more buzz than a hornet's nest, and it's, like, so perfect for my library. And I've never heard of the Beauty and the Squat Bears, but now that I've read the synopsis, I'm fascinated.

Book Review: Marvel Origin Story Picture Books

I picked up three of the Marvel Origin Story picture books at Borders for about $4.50 each. I figured they'd fall into the category of "books with high kid appeal and questionable literary merit." That said, don't ask me why Marvel picture books bother me less than Disney books. I never buy Disney books.

So I read them (The Mighty Thor, The Amazing Spider-Man, and The Uncanny X-Men) and I thought they were solid choices. They're written like fables--all narrative and no dialog. I did feel like there was a huge missed opportunity there. I mean, these are stories from comic books. Why not add some word bubbles to the art? The readers would understand Spider-Man's character better if they got some of his witty banter.

Without the dialog, the characters seem very serious. There's a surprising lack of humor in the stories. But that's not exactly a complaint. You do get a sense of the epic-ness of these comics, which works particularly well with Thor's origin story.

The main thing Marvel got right was the amount of text on each page. Unless you're Patricia Polacco, you can't get away with too many words on the page anymore. At least, not if you want to appeal to 7-year-olds. These are the right length for read-alouds, even if they are 48 pages rather than 32 (wow, I just counted and that surprised me), except for maybe the X-men story. I feel like they could have cut that one off earlier. They tried to cram a lot in.

The way that these work well in a school is that they give you so many opportunities to talk about character traits. Again, the Peter Parker and Thor stories are all about how those characters developed into decent people who took responsibility for their actions, and for their community. Obviously, the Thor story also gives you an opportunity to talk about mythology. In case it isn't obvious, the X-men story is the weak link. I don't really know what you'd do with that. Science? Mutations? Tolerance? The story skims too much. It doesn't give you a lot to work with.

There's also a Captain America Origin Story, but I didn't find that at the Borders where I was shopping. I bought these partly because I already have Ralph Cosentino's picture books about Batman, Superman, and Wonderwoman. I love them, because the art has this really retro vibe. They capture the feeling I imagine 1940s kids having when they read the original Amazing Stories, etc. These Marvel Origin Stories are much better, in my opinion, than the easy readers Capstone is putting out there (although I may buy those, too).

And basically, I'm a fan of introducing kids to this American mythology. People try to say Paul Bunyan and Johnny Appleseed are our mythology, but I believe it's comic books.