MangaBlog

There are many reasons to wish I was in Paris right now, and here’s one more: La Nuit du Manga, on June 4, featuring cosplay, Go lessons, anime screenings, and manga and fanzine booths. Oh, yeah, and Dance Dance Revolution. Sigh.

Today is the last day to submit your nominations for the MangaCast Awards. (Hey, Ed, is that the official name?) Go here to nominate your favorite publisher, manga series, short manga, and global manga, and the most important happening in the mangaworld this year.

Don’t delay—nominate today!

Here is a nice local-news article about a high school sophomore who got a $500 grant from the NEA to promote literacy. I’m totally awed by this kid. She had book fairs at a local Waldenbooks and persuaded two authors to attend, which is cool enough, but she also used part of the grant to buy manga and kamishibai for a first-grade class.

Kamishibai books are large sheets of non-flimsy paper that have pictures on the front and words on the back so that, when someone reads the book to a classroom filled with kids, they can, Tucker explained, simply hold one of the pages up and comfortably read from the back of the picture.

I’ve heard about these before but didn’t know they were available in the U.S. Anyway, I like it that she is using manga to get younger kids reading. This girl sounds like she will go far.

From Juné Manga comes the news that Yellow manga-ka Makoto Tateno will be a guest at this year’s Otakon in Baltimore on August 4-6. In addition to signing autographs and teaching a drawing lesson, Tateno will have dinner with one lucky prizewinner. She will also be appearing at Borders bookstores in the Los Angeles area and perhaps on the East Coast as well.

QueenieChan reports that vol. 1 of The Dreaming is going to a third printing, and rather a large one: 45,000 copies. The reason: The book is being picked up by Scholastic for its book clubs. If you want an example of manga going mainstream, there it is: You can’t get any more mainstream than the Scholastic book clubs. (They’ve picked up Peach Fuzz as well.) I wonder if that’s the market the Tokyopop people have their eye on with their manga/chapter book hybrids?

Anyway, congratulations to Queenie—and to Scholastic!

Active Anime has more details on the Viz titles announced at BEA. Anime News Service (scroll down—no permalink) muses about the spelling of Buso/Busou Renkin, one of the new properties.

Meanwhile, Anime on DVD posts the latest new title solicitations from Del Rey. There’s no permalink, so here’s the list.

Air Gear Vol. #03 – $10.95 – 01/31/2007
Free Collars Kingdom Vol. #01 – $10.95 – 01/31/2007
Ghost Hunt Vol. #06 – $10.95 – 12/31/2006
GuruGuru Pon-chan Vol. #07 – $10.95 – 01/31/2007
KageTora Vol. #04 – $10.95 – 12/31/2006
Kouga Ninja Scrolls (Basilisk Novel) Vol. #01 – $13.95 – 12/31/2006
Kurogane Vol. #03 – $10.95 – 12/31/2006
Mermaid Melody Pichi Pichi Pitch Vol. #04 – $10.95 – 01/31/2007
Nodame Cantabile Vol. #08 – $10.95 – 01/31/2007
Pastel Vol. #05 – $10.95 – 12/31/2006
School Rumble Vol. #04 – $10.95 – 12/31/2006
Sugar Sugar Rune Vol. #05 – $10.95 – 01/31/2007
Tsubasa Vol. #12 – $10.95 – 01/31/2007
Wallflower Vol. #10 – $10.95 – 12/31/2006

Interesting how quickly Del Rey is rolling out the volumes—it looks like four in a year for some series.

And ICv2 has the skinny on Mangaka America, due out in November from Collins.