Word Balloons

If there’s a younger comic fan in your house, you’ll want to bookmark a great new site: Word Balloons. The indefatigable Brigid Alverson is the creative force behind this new, all-ages comic blog, and she’s assembled a crack team of writers that includes Robin Brenner, Lori Henderson, Esther Keller, Eva Volin, Snow Wildsmith, and yours truly.

In the inaugural post, Brigid explains the purpose of the blog:

Word Balloons is a group blog about comics for kids. We will cover all ages from preschool through young adult, but we won’t lump all ages together; we’re smart enough to know that a three-year-old has different abilities and interests than a 13-year-old.

Our goal is to be the morning newspaper for anyone interested in kids’ comics: creators, editors, teachers, librarians, retailers, and most importantly, readers. We will present interviews, reviews, and opinions and link to the best of what other folks are writing. We expect to have frequent guest posts, and we invite our readers to send us a heads-up whenever they see something interesting about kids’ comics on the internet or even in print.

Also, we will cover all the comics kids read, as opposed to the comics grownups think they should read. That means we will cover works of great literary and artistic merit, but we won’t ignore the formulaic crap either. If it’s fun, it’s in.

So pour yourself some milk, grab the cookies, and join in the conversation!

I hope you’ll bookmark the site, leave a comment (or three), and offer your words of wisdom to other teachers and parents. My first contribution–a review of Flight: Explorer–is posted, as are several terrific interviews, reviews, and opinion pieces by Robin, Lori, and Brigid.