DVDs and graphic novels

Looking for a movie or perhaps a graphic novel? Here are two interesting lists.

Salon lists ten movies for the season suitable for teenagers, families and adults:

Stuck inside with the whole family this weekend, in between platters of leftover stuffing and football games involving teams you don’t care about? Is your aunt or mom or in-law beginning to eye that DVD of “Sleepless in Seattle” with that speculative gleam in her eye? Again, you think? Well, I’m here to help. Here’s a selection of recent releases – all now available on DVD, from online streaming services or both – that are suitable for mixed family groups of widely varying ages and backgrounds, without being entirely predictable or conventional.

Most of these movies probably aren’t appropriate for young children, or simply might bore them. That’s an entirely different problem, but I’m going to assume you’ve heard of Walt Disney and Frank Capra…. But these should play well with adventurous kids from 11 or 12 on up, and nearly all adults.

Good OK Bad has a great list of graphic novels from the very young through late teens:

For a couple years now I’ve wanted to do this list. More than any other request, I have people ask what graphic novels would be suitable for their children. And this is one of the questions I most want to answer. After all, if you spark a child’s interest in the medium with good, solid storytelling and non-exploitative narrative, what better chance of converting them to the medium when they’re older, right?

“Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it.” And all that.

But the problem is: it’s a tough question to answer. Part of the reason it’s taken me as long as it has to produce even this beginning of a list is that different kids are different kids and different parents are different parents. What I mean by that is that a book suitable to one seven-year-old might be too mature for another ten-year-old. And one parent might find no issue in, say, the rather chaste depictions of violence in Tintin while another might be very concerned with a comics story that makes free use of gunplay.

Basically, any list of recommendations for children will be founded on a list of caveats a mile deep. And really, I don’t want to bother with any of that. I just want to recommend some good books.

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