Children's+Comics

Children's Comics

My generation grew up with Walt Disney comics about Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck. Those are still available, albeit a bit hard to find outside a speciality store or the Disney website ([]). Some new ones, however, offer possibilities that were not available in those traditional comic books.

Phonics Comics (Wax, 2007) come in 3 levels from early readers to confident readers and are designed not only as graphica for young children but also as support for the development of phonics skills and sight words. As with the more traditional Disney comics, the panels are quite colorful and much of the storyline is carried in the pictures. The stories in Phonics Comics are about every day activities of children. Some stories are about girls, some are about boys and some have a variety of characters including pets. Phonics Comics have covers similar to a paperback book rather than the traditional comic book cover.

Tiny Titans is a more traditional comic book published by DC Comics ([|www.dccomics.com/dckids] ). The tiny titans are young children who are the children or nieces and nephews of traditional superheroes such as Batman and Superman. Most of the stories carry positive character traits and end with a moral. For example, in one story Batgirl and Supergirl forget to feed their pets and go off on a picnic. When they realize that they have forgotten to feed the pets, they not only invite the cat and dog to share the picnic but they also invite some characters they have met on their quest to find a good picnic spot - even though they initially didn't like those characters. While Phonics Comics do not have advertisements, most of the other comics do intersperse the reading with full-page advertisements for videos, video games, and other comics.

Sonic X is a comic that began as a video game and is now also available in comic book form and in graphic novel form. Reading level is upper elementary, but children who are familiar with the video game will have little trouble following the story line from the pictures. As with other forms of graphica, the children then begin to build their reading vocabulary in context.

Traditional superhero comics such as Superman and Batman (DC Comics, 2009) are currently available, of course, but the reading level in these comics is much higher. Reading levels are upper elementary. Because the story line is carried in the pictures, however, many young children enjoy those comics as well and can improve both fluency and vocabulary by reading them.