When my three brothers and I were kids, we’d discover magazines, special catalogs, and the occasional comic book tucked into our stockings. Last year, on the heels of my then 5-year-old’s announcing his love for all things comics, the tradition continued. (“When I cried when I was a baby,” he told me, “I just wanted comic books.”) He loves Teen Titans Go!, and DC Super Hero Girls. But I’ve found that beginner paperback books with a comic-book feel, like Scholastic’s Mega Robo Bros and The Snow Day From the Black Lagoon (from the Black Lagoon series) do the trick, too. We also dipped into the English adaptation of the manga series Naruto, written and illustrated by Masashi Kishimoto, which tells the story of the plucky ninja for which the series is named. The volumes (all 72 of them) are read from right to left, holding to their original orientation in Japanese, and they deliver action-packed fun.
