A Parent’s Guide to the Best Kids’ Comics: Choosing Titles Your Children Will Love
Author: Scott Robins and Snow Wildsmith
Foreward: Jeff Smith & Vijaya Iyer
Publisher: Krause Publications (May 31, 2012)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1440229945
ISBN-13: 978-1440229947
What kid doesn’t love comics? The colors, the drawings, the easy and short format make comics both appealing and fun for kids and publishers know this so there’s a ton out there. The world of comics and graphic novels can be hard to navigate for a parent. Enter Snow Wildsmith and Scott Robins with their practical and comprehensive guide to help you out.
The guide is incredibly detailed and well-made. There are sections by age group and type of comic. Each page is covered with glossy images and good details on each series or comic, making it both as fun as the comics it addresses and visually appealing for parents and kids.
At my house, the grandkids got to it first – six year Aiden specifically. They have permission to open my mail if it looks like books and they love letting me know I have book mail. By the time I got home from work and was handed the book, it was covered in Post-it highlighting stickies. Aiden had already selected all the comics he liked and made sure I knew that the yellow stickies were his. Jasmine’s predictably, were the pink ones. They’d both pored over the guide and I have a long list. They found old favorites too, books I’d reviewed and books I’d judged for the Cybils, so the guide also became a source of much discussion. We jabbered on for hours about comics and what they liked about them and what they looked for. I didn’t expect that. I was expecting a book for parents. This is much, much more.
I highly recommend buying A PARENT’S GUIDE TO THE BEST KIDS’ COMICS not just for the great recommendations, but for the fun you and your kids will have going through the book. Since it promotes literary discussion, it’s highly educational for both parents and children and will foster of a love of reading that will last a lifetime.
I’m not surprised at how well the book is done or how organized it is. Snow was on a Graphic Novel panel on the Cybils with me years ago and I remember being very impressed with her insight and knowledge of the genre. If you have kids in your life, you NEED this guide. It’s perfect for librarians and teachers as well.
About the Authors
Snow Wildsmith has served on committees for the American Library Association and Young Adult Library Services Association. She reviews graphic novels for Booklist, ICv2.com, Good Comics for Kids and Robin Brenner’s No Flying No Tights. She also writes booktalks and creates recommended reading lists for Ebsco’s NoveList database. McFarland will publish her first books for teens, a nonfiction series on joining the military, in 2012.
Scott Robins is a librarian at the Toronto Public Library and an advocate for children’s graphic novels. He is a contributing blogger for Good Comics for Kids via School Library Journal.com, and is the children’s programming director for the annual Toronto Comic Arts Festival. He has also served on the graphic novel selection committee for the Canadian Children’s Book Centre’s Best Books for Kids and Teens in 2010 and 2011 and was a jury member of the 2011 Joe Shuster Awards in the “Comics for Kids” category
Disclosure: A free copy of this book was furnished by the publisher for review via the publisher, but providing a copy did not guarantee a review. This information is provided per the regulations of the Federal Trade Commission.
