Watching my son become a veracious graphic novel reader is one of the purest delights of my entire adult life. After several years of only very gently pushing Marvel superhero toys to replace or join his dinosaurs (didn’t take), offering to read him the Marvel encyclopedia instead of the Pokedex in kindergarten (wasn’t interested), and trying to get his first words to be “All Hail Doctor Doom” (that one worked, Doom be praised), turns out I just calmly needed to wait for him to learn to read and I wouldn’t be able to tear him away from comics.
My wife and I have always enjoyed reading to the kids, but in Kindergarten (somewhere in the 5 to 6 year old range) my son started blazing through books on his own and hasn’t looked back. Every week now is full of library visits filling up our basket with as many Magic Treehouse chapter books and comics that we can carry.
Below you’ll find our favorites through less than two years of his reading journey. Keep in mind, this is quite different than my own personal favorite comics. Although that list includes popular all-ages fare like Jeff Smith’s Bone, my kids haven’t been quite ready to dive into that one yet (although I did talk him into me reading some short stories from the Tall Tales collection!). So you can check out the CBH best comics of all time for assorted all ages or middle grade picks that I think sit among the best of the best, but this list is pure, unADULTurated kid-friendly comics. [Read more…] about The Best Comics For Kids Age 7 and Under (New Readers)!