Right at this moment Link is working to paint his model boat. This boat will be used tomorrow for the cub scout “rain gutter regatta.” These are races where the boys propel their little sailboats by blowing on them. At first Link was not excited to make a boat. “I always lose!” He wailed. This is true. Both his rocket ship and his pinewood derby car performed poorly against the work of other boys. This is because I did not have the knowledge to help him make a good model and Howard did not have the time. Link has warmed up to this boat project. He did extra sanding in hopes of making his boat go faster. Now he his happily applying layers of paint. In a few minutes I need to go down and have a conversation with him in which I emphasize how much fun he is having making his boat. Hopefully I can help him focus on the process rather than the results. Tomorrow is the race. I’d love for him to do well, but I’m prepared for the opposite.
After the boat is all painted, Link will be heading to bed. Tonight painting supplants his normal reading time. Usually he reads in bed for 30 minutes or more. This reading is a recent development which delights me. After years of arguing with him about reading, we’ve finally found books where he pleads to read just a little bit more. Unfortunately these books are manga titles, which are not readily available from our local libraries. The junior high school has a small selection, but Kiki has already brought all of those home. I wish there was a Netflix for manga titles. As it is, we just need to buy books as the books and the funds become available through either amazon.com or the local comic book store. Link loves these books. Looking at a page full of nothing but text is daunting for him. The manga offer complex vocabulary and storylines that are visually tempered by images. So far he’s collected the first of a Pokemon series and the first two Full Metal Alchemist books. Kiki has focused her attention on Fruits Basket. I’m eyeing the Naruto series, but the kids have seen all the TV episodes already, so I’m not sure I’ll invest in those. Any other suggestions for Manga appropriate to kids would be appreciated. (The kids prefer manga that reads backward. It makes the books cooler.) I can tell I’m going to need to clear some shelf space to house this particular enthusiasm.
I don’t know anything about Manga, but Nick’s The Last Airbender is one that my 7 year old daughter enjoys. She likes the show and then the comic books help expand the world for her.
Does your library have free ILL? I used it extensively when I lived in Madison Indiana to get all sorts of things that the library in a town of 12,000 people just wasn’t big enough to have.
I’ll think about manga offerings. Unfortunately, a lot of my favorites don’t bridge the culture gap for the younger part of their audience. Ferex, Ranma 1/2 is aimed at elementary school kids, but it has more than a little female nudity in it.
I’ll see about hunting down some Naruto, some FMA, and some Fruits Basket to see what sorts of things your kids like (I’m badly out of touch with more recent manga. I was really into it when it was difficult to find and the commercial stuff in English mostly looked like it had been faxed over on a low quality fax machine.)
Usagi Yojimbo is really neat, though not exactly Manga. I bet you could get the first book via ILL. (It is about a Samurai Rabbit wandering across feudal Japan.)
Ooh, I just thought of one. Oh My Goddess is a quirky romance with shades of fighting manga in it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oh_My_Goddess%21
For bonus points, the series started in the 1980s and early character and costume design is very much a product of the time.
Here’s the page on Usagi Yojimbo:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usagi_Yojimbo
The original Dragon Ball is a pretty cool retelling of Journey to the West.
I’ll go down to the public library in the next day or two and see what they have on the shelves. I know there’s a lot of good stuff out there that I’m not thinking of.
You might look at Inuyasha . . . it’s popular enough that you shouldn’t have any trouble finding it, and it seems to be along the lines of the stuff Link’s already reading. I can’t remember if the American version of the manga reads back-to-front, though . . . I think it might not.
I also enjoy Detective Conan, but since the theme is murder mysteries, it might have a few two many corpses for kids . . .
There’s a couple such services – Paperspine.com and Bookswim which are both basically netflix for books – I have no idea how much manga they do or don’t have. I know the founder of Paperspine and hope they do well, so they get my vote – but your choice will probably depend on the selection of material. (There are probably quite a number of others, they just happen to be the one I know of.)
http://www.mangatakeout.com/MangaDefault.aspx
I can’t vouch for the company, but their website says they rent manga. Might be too pricy.
I very much like ‘Hikaru No Go’ – a series about a boy learning to play go, with the fight of the week replaced by go matches. Admittedly, part of my enjoyment stems from my love of board games, but it’s very well done generally.
Let me know if you need me to send Link something: Ann Arbor has Manga falling off the used book shelves in shovelloads.
Oh good suggestion! Let me check local used bookstores before putting you to the trouble of shipping things. It is also possible that used manga will be available inexpensively at the local Anime con in a few months.