Comics: Easy as ABC: The Essential Guide to Comics for Kids

by Ivan Brunetti, Francoise Mouly (Introduction)

Overview

Filled with activities, Comics: Easy as ABC is a fun way for young readers to effortlessly and playfully start thinking like writers and artists. This simple guide is also aimed at parents, teachers, and librarians: all will enjoy learning the ABCs of this popular and rapidly growing medium.
Children kindergarten-age and up are shown how to use basic shapes to make faces, eyes, noses, and design their own characters. Ivan Brunetti’s funny and incisive advice on the language of comics (panels, lettering, balloons, and so much more) naturally leads budding artists and writers into thinking about their characters, settings, and prompts. A section with essential tips on how to read comics with young children rounds out the package. Featuring advice from master cartoonists and star authors— including Geoffrey Hayes, Eleanor Davis, Art Spiegelman, and many others.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781943145393
Publisher:	TOON Books
Publication date:	04/02/2019
Pages:	52
Sales rank:	546,336
Product dimensions:	7.10(w) x 10.30(h) x 0.20(d)
Lexile:	740L (what's this?)
Age Range:	3 - 7 Years

Editorial Reviews

03/18/2019

An idiosyncratic guide to drawing comics packs a lot of information into relatively few pages, covering doodles and basic shapes, characters and emotions, settings and perspective, lettering and layout, and how to develop a story. It also introduces trade lingo (panel, spread, and emanata included), offering readers a working vocabulary about what it is, exactly, that comics do. Filled with ideas and instructions, the antic pages are studded with asides and suggestions from graphic novel celebrities such as Liniers, Chris Ware, Roz Chast, and Neil Gaiman. Though the content will likely prove most useful for readers above the lower end of the stated age range, the mix of words and images effectively moves from entry-level techniques to difficult concepts as the book progresses. And the last eight pages offer a useful guide for adults looking to read comic books with children, an inclusion that sneakily puts adults building visual literacy on the same page as younger readers. Ages 3–up. (Apr.)

Publishers Weekly

… This volume … is basically Cartooning 101 for precocious kids … And it’s an invaluable resource for kids (like mine) who are always writing, always drawing, and always trying to marry the two.” — Jamie Greene, The Roarbots

From the Publisher

★ 06/01/2019

Gr 1–5—This volume distills every major lesson a young doodler, comic book reader, or graphic novel enthusiast would ever need. Brunetti starts slow with a simple adage to "doodle!" and then moves at a quick clip with a new lesson on each page. The inclusion of complex topics such as perspective, scale, and movement emphasizes how rich and nuanced the medium is. The lessons become more challenging, inspiring readers to return to the book as their skills progress. Brunetti maintains a jovial tone that will encourage children to pause or skip around as the mood strikes. Artwork and words of wisdom from illustrators such as Jeff Smith ("Bone"), Elise Gravel ("Disgusting Critters"), Neil Gaiman ("Sandman"), and James Sturm ("Adventures in Cartooning") are interspersed throughout. The "How To Read Comics with Kids" tips may not be groundbreaking to storytime experts but will be invaluable to parents, especially those of the mind-set that a graphic novel isn't a real book. The further reading and bibliography list other comics or illustration manuals and acknowledge the breadth of work by other greats who paved the way for the comics field. VERDICT Drawing guides have never been so appealing. A must.—Amy M. Laughlin, Ferguson Library, Stamford, CT

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