One of my favorite things is manga. ‘Manga’ is the term for Japanese made comics. Manga looks like a graphic novel, except that most times, it is backwards. To keep the traditional format and not to mess up the inking, the pages in a manga are supposed to be read backwards, right to left. However, some manga out there, have the format most Americans are used to, where you read left to right, and the cover is not backwards.

Manga is much like a western-style graphic novel, but with a different style of art, with exaggerating features such as the eyes and the length of the legs. It also is more like a readable-movie, while western-style graphic novels are more like illustrated books. The western-style graphic novels have more of a real-life effect of drawing in them than manga does. There is quite difference between the two, yet both are similar.

The physical characteristics of an average manga are simple. The front cover and back height is about 19cm, width is about 12.5cm. The weight of one manga book is less than a pound since it’s paperback. The thickness of the novel is about 1.5cm, but depends on the number of pages which is around 150-200 (faces) pages. It also smells like any other normal book, just with more of an inkish smell than regular written novels because of more ink used for pictures. There is usually no color unless it’s on the covers, with an inked grey-scale for the pages.

The word ‘manga’ was first commonly used around Japan in the late 18^th century with a picture book of sorts by Santo Kyoden in 1798. It was also was used in 1814, with some works of Aikawa Minwa such as ‘Manga hyakujo’ and ‘Hokusai manga’ containing assorted drawings from the famous artist Hokusai’s sketchbook. The first person that used the word ‘manga’ of its modern meaning was Rakuten Kitazawa. The official modern meaning of ‘manga’ is Japanese comic books or graphic novels.

How mangakas (makers of manga) make manga sounds easy, but takes a long time. Like a book, you have to come up with a plot and characters. Then you draw it on paper, which is a big process that takes time, patience and paneling. Now days, a lot of editing and finishing details are now done on the computer, but a few people probably make completely hand-drawn manga and doujinshi (self-published manga or novels).

The reason I like manga is because there are so many types of it and that it’s really interesting. When I think of western-style graphic novels, I think of superhero comics and such. But when I think of manga, I think of anything from hard core science-fiction to a fragile fantasy in the past. Manga has all kinds of art styles from chibi-doodles to dramatic poses that have a little realistic feel to them. They can also be dramatic and have murder mysteries in them, while others have characters with swords and fighting, to ones that are just plain funny with crazy plots. I’m completely addicted to manga, and to anime which is animated manga. If you want to learn more about manga, here is the link (but be warned, for you can easily get addicted to this hobby of reading too much manga and not enough regular novels. Parents are evil sometimes by forcing you to read an ‘actual’ book.):http://www.reference.com/browse/manga

Picture found at:http://blog.cleveland.com/andone/2008/07/180px-Manga_in_Jp-1.svg.png

Deidara

This is one of my drawings of fan art from the website ratemydrawings.com. RMD has two applications that you might just need the latest Flash Player to make it work. You can draw anything appropriate from a bowl of fruit to a manga character you created or even an animation of stick figures. Click the link on picture or on the bottom of this page, which also takes you to the site. Go on, try your hand at drawing.

The Breadwinner is about a girl named Parvana who lives in Afghanistan. After her father was arrested by the Taliban for being a writer and for being educated in another country, Parvana now has to pretend to be a boy. The reason being, only men can sell things in the market, and women have to be escorted by a male at all times with their burqas on, which cover their entire body and face. In this book you will find out what Parvana has to do to survive in Afghanistan with her helping her family while the Taliban have taken over their country. Will her father come back? How long will Parvana have to pretend to be a boy with a fake identity? Find out in this book, "The Breadwinner."

I liked The Breadwinner for a number of reasons. It has a good main character, suspense, and a good plot. It also has an unexpected ending, which that there isn't an exact ending.

I would recommend this book to people who like a book that's short, has suspense, who enjoy girls as main characters, and is mainly written for ages 11-14. I wouldn't recommend it to people who prefer longer books, that have no suspense, who don't enjoy girls as main characters. Since there's mild violence, and mentioning of killing, I don't recommend the book to littler kids. The Breadwinner is a good short book that I enjoyed and I hope you read it.

image found at:http://www.onebooktwovillages.org/images/breadwinnerbig.jpg