Cartooning for Kids

Joan Weller is head librarian at the West Branch of Ottawa Public
Library, and the children’s literature reviewer for the Ottawa
Citizen.

The recent surge in popularity of comic strips for children, especially
“Garfield,” has inspired children to try their own hand at creating
them. This book, designed for children ages 8 to 12, takes the
would-be-cartoonist from the initial “idea” to the finished
“strip.”

Adopting a lighthearted approach, the book covers supplies (pencil,
marker, eraser, paper, and ideas) and provides easy, step-by-step
instructions on drawing people and animals, and on adding action,
texture, color and setting to the strip. Both simple one-frame jokes and
multiframed strips with longer texts and speech balloons are explained
with helpful and funny illustrations. Finally, projects, including
cartoon greeting cards, posters, flip books, and other decorations, are
outlined.

Highly recommended for beginners, this is a good prerequisite to
working with Patrick Jenkins’s Flipbook Animation and Other Ways to
Make Cartoons Move.