What we’re reading this week

Posted on October 17, 2005 by Brigid Alverson

I haven’t had much time to post, but the pace of manga acquisition continues unabated in my household. My latest reviews, of Fruits Basket 5 and Ultra Maniac 1, are up on Manga Life. This has turned into a little project for me, to sit down and read Furuba in sequence and really think about it as a complete work, rather looking at it a volume at a time. This is a rewarding exercise and I highly recommend it.
My 12-year-old has been working our inter-library loan system to get Imadoki, Kill Me Kiss Me, Alice 19th, and W Juliet. I’m noticing that all these are rated for Older Teens and wondering if I should be reading them first, but—too late!
Meanwhile, the 11-year-old is wallowing in Yotsuba 3 and Full Moon 3, which I bought today basically as bribes to make her do her math homework. We also bought Dramacon today and ordered Steady Beat.
And that chuckling noise you hear in the background is my husband reading Cromartie High School (another treasure from inter-library loan).

About Brigid Alverson

Brigid Alverson has been reading comics since she was 4. After earning an MFA in printmaking, she headed to New York to become a famous artist but ended up working with words instead of pictures, first as a book editor and later as a newspaper reporter. She started MangaBlog to keep track of her daughters’ reading habits and now covers manga, comics and graphic novels as a freelancer for School Library Journal, Publishers Weekly Comics Week, Comic Book Resources, the Barnes & Noble Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog, and Robot 6. She also edits the Good Comics for Kids blog at School Library Journal. Now settled in the outskirts of Boston, Brigid is married to a physicist and has two daughters.
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2 Responses to What we’re reading this week

  1. tangognat says:
    October 17, 2005 at 10:01 pm

    Some spoilers about the books your daughter checked out:

    W Juliet has plenty of cross-dressing, which is why I’m guessing it is rated for older teens, but it is rather sweet.
    Imadoki is a very cute and heartwarming book, I’m guessing the older teen rating for is because one of the supporting characters becomes pregnant and struggles with what to do about the baby. This storyline always seemed to be a bit different in tone than the main plot to me. That’s the only thing that comes to my mind that would explain the older teen rating, but I don’t read manga with any sort of parental radar on :)

  2. David says:
    October 18, 2005 at 3:38 am

    Like tangonat, some spoilers:

    In an early volume of Alice 19th, the protagonist is nearly raped, and there’s some other fairly dark material in the title. The antagonists basically prey on human weakness — jealousy, anger, despair, etc. — and that can lead to some unsettling exchanges. Still, if your daughter can deal with Akito from Furuba, she should be fine.

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