ICv2 rewrites the press release on the new Tokyopop lines of chapter books and taps into a universal truth:
kids love fart jokes
It’s worth a click to see the sample cover. Clearly Tokyopop knows what they’re doing here, creating a book that looks just like big sister’s OEL manga.
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.
I sent TP a email a while back saying they should concentrate on their manga more. However I am starting to see that they must be following some sort of statistic they see in their sales and releasing OEL and kids books. I don’t think they consider themselves a “manga publisher” anymore. Which is not a bad thing, kids should read.
True- although they should get some books with a main character of color in there. Well, at least I can always buy Runaways for my mom’s classroom.