Ack! Word overuse strikes again!

I try to recognize my flaws in my writing - my tendency towards run on sentences, my love of the comma. However, looking back over this blog I also have to acknowledge my overuse of the word cute.

Attempting to solve this dilemma I will consult a thesaurus. Instead I could say:

• adorable
• attractive
• ambrosial (that's a nice one)
• appealing
• charming
• captivating
• darling
• dainty
• beautiful
• delightful
• pleasant
• pretty
• darling
• dear
• delectable
• delicious
• dreamy
• fetching
• precious

I think that's a good start, now I just need to remember to use them. Perhaps a sticky note on my computer screen.

Black Bird Online Preview

I love the way so many sites let you read/preview online.

Here's a preview of Shojo Beat's Black Bird.

Saving money much to the corporate bookstore's chagrin

I spent part of my morning in the big box bookstore reading away. I figure, they wouldn't have benches if they didn't want me to hang out.

My friend Joy emailed me the names of some of the Manga that is popular with her kids at the high school library, so I decided to read a few volumes on the sly. I had never heard of Kitchen Princess, which she named so I pulled vol.1 and began to read. It's a pretty cute, fairly typical love triangle as far as Shojo goes. I did think the addition of the recipes that the heroine uses in the book was cute. I also picked up a copy of vol.2 of After School Nightmare (I got vol. 1 from the public library)and read that while I was there. Its an interesting combination of a horror novel and strange love story all in one. I'll have to keep reading that series, I'm not sure I can do it justice without reading the whole thing. I also read the first volume of Mixed Vegetables, where a girl decides to date a boy in her cooking school because his family runs a famous sushi restraunt, and she wants to be a sushi chef. Unfortunately, her parents own a bakery so she's expected to become a baker. Mayhem ensues when it's discovered the boy is using her because he wants to become a pastry chef. Convoluted anyone?

I know I read another girl oriented book while I was there, but it was so memorable I've forgotten it... and didn't write anything down. The big bookstore did make some money off me as I slunk away with vol.4 of Otomen. I can't help it, its my kryptonite.

I also happily dropped ChocoMimi back in the slot at the public library. I'd be happy never to see that travesty again in my life. It was so insipid, it hurt me to read it. At first I thought it was just me, so I gave it to one of my girls to read, she made it a few pages and said "I can't do it, it's just too stupid." Glad its not just me. The only highlight in the book is the dog who thinks he's a samurai, he's the highlight.

I also started reading Rapunzel's Revenge by Shannon Hale and the graphic novel adaptation of Coraline by Neil Gaiman. I know the Coraline is an award winner, but I think it will suffer with students because of the appeal of the visuals in the recent film. I do think its a faithful and well done interpretation of the novel.

That was my Saturday in a nutshell, unless you count writing a paper for another class, dealing with intermittent power outages, grocery store trips, and cat wrestling.

I've been reading too much manga...

which caused me to make onigiri for dinner tonight! Ha ha. I even made up all my own fillings, to make sure it was vegetarian and vegan friendly.

I'm having trouble finding fictional graphic novels that I think would be good for students at the intermediate (5th-6th) level. There are the generic Rosen Graphica which provide biographies, history, aliens, etcetera, but its a difficult age to look for. Much of the material is too young, or too mature. Sigh. Not all fifth grade girls want to read Baby Mouse or Happy Happy Clover, but aren't old enough for some of the other titles.

I got the new Goldsmith book from ALA (The Reader's Advisory to Graphic Novels), and right now I'm kind of disappointed. Its very basic, which I'm sure some people need, but is a little simplistic for my purposes. Perhaps I'll be less disappointed the further I get into it, I think the main thing that is sticking in my craw is having to pay $45.oo for a 120 page book. I've never understood why professional titles are soooooo expensive.

I'm also trying out del.icio.us for bookmarking some of the review web sites I'm finding. I'll see how I like it.

while browsing today I found...

This is an interesting commentary on i09.com from last year about manga and public perception by Jason Thompson, and today there was a post on the addition of graphic novels to The Los Angeles Times Festival of Books. Both are interesting commentary, the Jason Thompson post on manga itself and American/western perception of the genre, and the second that graphic novels are becoming more and more recognized for their content.

The Ongoing Drama Called 'Cantarella'

I've been trying to read a mix of both popular and critically acclaimed graphic novels and manga for this project. So, I've really been looking around, checking best seller lists, YALSA lists, etcetera. While perusing the ALA catalog the other day, I noticed that they had a poster designed by the artist who wrote/drew Cantarella, and is mentioned as being on the YALSA Recommended Graphic Novel list for 2006. Obviously, I think to myself "Huh, I should check that out."

Easier said than done.

In doing this project, I'm reading ALOT. I currently have 39 books checked out from the county library, all graphic novels and manga (manga is serialized, and is like pretzels, who eats just one?). I figured, surely the county library system has this book, its recommended, and they have a catalog that is made up of 3 counties and a junior college system. They'll have it.

Nope.

Surely the city library system will have Cantarella, I live in the fourth largest city in the country!

Nope.

School district holdings? Nope
Borders? Nope
Waldenbooks? Nope
Independent book stores? Nope
Used book stores? Nope

I finally found it at one BN location. All I can say is that after this, this book better bring it. I'm afraid to start reading the darn thing after all the drama just to get it. I may just hold onto it like some shopping holy grail, never to be read, I'll just recite the story of trying to buy it.

Sherrilyn Kenyon | Borders Media

Sherrilyn Kenyon Borders Media

Just thought this was interesting. When asked about the manga and her interest in the format she mentions the fact that she is dyslexic, and only learned to read because of comic books.

Learning the Lingo

My eyes are almost crossed from trying to learn some of the terminology associated with manga. First, there are the two major divisions: shojo and shonen. Easy enough then, shojo for girls, shonen for boys. Wait, but then there is seinen, which is aimed at young men. Along comes the next reference, to shonen-ai which means boys love, which apparently has offensive/pedophiliac overtones in Japan. Hence books that have a m/m romantic story line are commonly referred to as BL. Next came yaoi, which are apparently explicit and pornographic. Which led me to wonder what story lines with f/f love stories are called… yuri! However, then it turns out there are two kinds of yuri too! Yuri shojo, which is more of a love story, and yuri shonen which is apparently kind of ‘pervy.’ And apparently if you're a fan in the U.S. you can use the term 'otaku' to describe yourself, which means you're kind of a super fan, but in Japan its a derogatory description of a super fan.

Ack! Can you imagine trying to find books to add to your collection and stumbling across a whole new vocabulary? This would be the point of my independent study… finding out these things now! I was pretty sure I could find my way around the graphic novels, but I’m really learning a lot when it comes to manga!

Random Disappointment

There’s a big trend in making graphic novels out of some of the more popular urban fantasy books (Patricia Briggs, Jim Butcher, Laurell K. Hamilton), and interestingly a couple of the paranormal romance authors have manga series that are being created around some of their more popular books. I knew that Sherrilyn Kenyon had spun her Dark Hunter series off into a manga series, which didn’t surprise me, as she is known as a big manga fan and mentions manga and graphic novels in her own books. I was a little surprised when I found a manga version of a Christine Feehan book yesterday at the book store. It was an epic disappointment. The quality was so poor it was ridiculous, I have no idea what the publisher was thinking. The illustrations were amateurish, and the plot was cut to shreds. Her entire series of books are fairly sexual, and the graphic novel cuts from the heroine being in her underwear on one page to dressed and flying through the air on the next. I’m assuming that they were trying to tone down the sex in the storylines to make the books more marketable to teens, but it didn’t work. There’s just a huge variable in quality between the two, which I’m assuming comes from the difference in the two authors’ familiarity with the manga format.

Dark Hunter Sherrilyn Kenyon

Dark Hunger Christine Feehan

Emergency Room Readers

I was sitting in the emergency room the other night, waiting the interminable wait (once you stop bleeding they put you in the slow lane), and all I had to read was Vol.1 of Tokyo Mew Mew. Best funny looks I've ever gotten from people in the waiting room with me. Once again, I fell victim to the "you're not supposed to be reading that, you're a grown up" look. It was pretty hilarious. Not to mention the fact that, after having lost that much blood, Tokyo Mew Mew was probably the height of my reading comprehension ability.

Begin at the beginning...

Just to set this up- this blog is part of my independent study project for my library science degree. I’ve decided to spend this semester learning more about graphic novels and manga and their role in the school and public library. I’ve been a public school teacher for a while now, so I’ve seen how well they work for motivating hard to interest readers, and I’ve seen how much kids flat out enjoy reading them.

I’m kind of jealous of kids today, and how easily available graphic novels and manga are. You can wander into any major chain bookstore or independent and find a huge selection to choose from. My own experiences were very different. Around 1985 a TV show appeared on my television, called Robotech. It was love at first sight. Lisa and Rick made my pre-teen heart flutter. My father had raised me on a steady diet of Godzilla and Dr.Who, so I was already predisposed to loving sci-fi. Robotech had everything I needed, aliens, battle mecha, and a love story. It was my first exposure to anime, and it stuck. I loved Robotech, I wanted more. The only problem was, there was no place to get it. My father ended up buying tickets to Star Trek conventions to get me into the exhibit room, which at the time was the best place to get anime materials. I would wander out of the sales room laden with books in Japanese, movies, comics and albums.

Despite starting out with a bang, I drifted away from my interest because it was hard to find, and the only other alternative was comic books. While there were some comics I liked, I’m not a super hero fan, and many American comics are all flash and bang. I was also entering my hard core feminist phase and was offended by all the female super heroes in spandex and bikinis. How did they fight in those things?

I’ve been enjoying reading the manga I’ve found so far, and I know that had it been available to me as a young adult I would have been an addict. I may become an adult addict, I’ve already found a few series that I may keep reading long after I’m done with this class.