Saturday, March 5, 2011

Aurora's first manga

Today we went to Borders so Aurora could spend a gift card she got for there.  I picked up a Python book and thumbed through it for a while.  Then Kim needed me to watch Aurora because she wanted to go look at books in places other than the kids section, where Athena and Arianna wanted to hang out.
Aurora had already picked out a book, but was still looking around.  We went over to the history section for a while a checked out what was in store there, and then started heading back to the kids section.
On our way back we ran into the manga section, and I made a comment to Aurora about how I'd like for her to try manga to see if she liked it.  She started talking about putting her book back and I told her that she needs the book she wants to buy, not the one I want her to buy.
She asked me what manga was about, so I randomly picked up a book that looked like it may be something in her area and showed her the first page.  I showed her how the first page is what we normally think of as the last page.  I then put the book back and started looking for something that I thought was closer to what she may like when she asked me for that same book back.  I explained it was just a book I randomly selected, not necessarily anything I thought she would like.
While I looked around she thumbed through the book and declared she wanted to put her other book back and get the one I had shown her.  It is called Neko Ramen.  It is about a cat named Taisho who owns a Ramen shop and comes up with ridiculous ideas about how he can sell Ramen, such as using spaghetti noodles and calling it Italian Ramen.
I double checked she really wanted to get this book I just randomly grabbed off the shelf instead of the one she had already picked out.  She assured me she was, so she ended up buying it.
On the way home she read through the book and thought it was really funny.  She thought it was really weird how the excited faces look.  I explained that it is part of the manga art style.  It took us both a while to realise that you ride from top-right, down, then move to the top of the next panel to the left.  We started off thinking you started at the top-right, moved left, and then down, until we realised why the panels sometimes made no sense.
I hope Aurora takes to this manga thing.  Aurora and I have didn't interests in books.  She likes non-fiction and historical fiction type books.  I prefer science fiction and fantasy.
I have been able to get her into the Narnia series.  We have finished The Magician's Nephew and The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.  At first she did not like The Magician's Nephew, but she gave it a second shot and started to get into it.  We are presently taking a break from the Narnia series and reading James and the Giant Peach.
So, if this trend continues, Aurora and I will have more things to do together.  Plus, it has been nice reading good children's books that I would otherwise not put any interest into.
As for me, I'm reading a chapter a day of an eleven-hundred plus page book on programming in Python, which is followed by another Python book that covers more advanced topics on the language and is equally as large.  Fun times.

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