As a full blown bee-nerd I am very happy that Clan Apis is recommended here.
As an illustrator I approve this definition of âreal literatureâ :
My gateway was âLucky Lukeâ, âGastonâ and âSpirouâ and those are still great comics for kids (I know that just by looking how they destroy it in my public library), for more contemporary comics I advise âAnna & Frogaâ, recentlly translated by Drawn & Quarterly.
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That was my first series, too.
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My recollection of Asterix in Helvetia is that they centre on melted cheese.
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No âHilda and the Bird Paradeâ? Go home Boing Boing, you are drunk.
We used the âreading by frustrationâ method on our oldest. He liked playing various video games (The Incredible Machine, various roleplaying games), but they of course required reading text every so often. We started him off in our lap, then him playing in the same room while we did work, and then bit-by-bit got slower to walk over to his machine to read the text he needed to know.
It took only a week or two for his impatience over having to wait a whole 2 minutes to win out and for him to start reading. And since the names/words werenât always recognizable, he also had to learn how to sound out words (which weâd been going over for a while) that he hadnât seen before.
The younger had a far higher patience level, so he learned through Calvin and Hobbes, although thereâs some pretty complicated themes in quite a few of themâŚ
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The only comics that really caught my interest were horror.
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When I was a kid, I desperately wanted the EC comics, but they werenât reprinted yet. A friend turned me on to DCs horror/scifi anthologies such as âTales of the Unexpectedâ et al and sold to me a giant box of them for $10. Those were great fun.
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I used to read a lot of comics at the old G.C. Murphyâs Five and Dime (the â5 & 10â), a niche now filled by the smaller Dollar Stores.
I recall a wire rack of comics attached to the wall back in the pet area. I think I also remember goldfish for sale close by.
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Dude, those werenât reprints, man; those were like flashbacks!
Is that why your eldest now says, âAll your base are belong to usâ? 
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100 best English-language novels published since 1923 according to TIME magazine includes Watchmen.
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Do. not. remind. me. of. the. joy. of. Internet. Memes.
:-). Mostly.
There are few things in the world that require more stamina than not crushing the joy of your 6-old desperate to share the cleverness of this weekâs Internet meme.
Of course, by the time he was old enough to see through my act and realize that my sense of humour had atrophied so badly that I didnât think that âI can has cheezeburger?â was the height of cleverness, he was also old enough to use memes as strategic weaponry by arming his little brother with the meme of the week.
The 5,723rd time my youngest regaled me with âall toasters toast toastâ, I was ready to try and stuff my oldest into a toaster. However, he was too big, and he kept reminding me âRemember the sunk costs, Dad! Remember the sunk costs!â
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I used to spend a lot of time at my older cousinsâ house, and they had a lot of Mad magazines.
I saw an issue of Highlights at the doctors office a couple months ago, and Goofus is still a dick!
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Sounds like some top parenting. Bravo!
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Iâve read a good number of the listed books and am putting the rest on my list of ones to read. Off the top of my head the only other recommendation I would make, other than anything by Ben Hatke :), is the Mal and Chad books by Stephen McCranie, which follow the adventures of an inventive boy and his talking dog as he tries to impress his elementary school crush. The stories are very well constructed with lots of fun, peril, and adventure.
It was Peanuts for me. Too much Peanuts. Do not encourage children to overdose on Peanuts; let them live their happy lives for a little while longer in ignorance of existential despair. (cf. http://3eanuts.com/ .)
We didnât have much else around other than Tintin and Asterix, but Iâm sure lots of folks didnât have it nearly so good.
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Those early Peanuts cartoons really were full of weird dark existentialism.
The really important thing about kids reading comic books is that they will read them over and over again. Thatâs good practice before you move on to longer text-based reading.
