Besides Manga

Kitamura, Satoshi. Me and My Cat. 1999.

As a professor and the mother of four children (one of whom is a teenager - egad!), I am slightly ashamed to admit that I love reading Japanese manga and watching Japanese anime (in translation... sigh...). From the first time I saw Star Blazers on Channel 38, I was hooked. I loved the slapstick comedy, and the ridiculous drama and the big messy hair. I had the same reaction when I first discovered a manga collection at my library and read through every series I could get my hands on.

But even if I had never watched Gaiking or read Ranma 1/2, I hope I would have found Satoshi Kitamura's picture books. His stories are strange and surreal and silly - think Haruki Murakami for kids - but it is his artwork that defines his style. I am especially fond of Me and My Cat, where the boy narrator wakes one morning to find that he has been transplanted into his cat's body. His adventures as he tries to learn to be a cat are immensely entertaining, but it is the images of the cat, now inhabiting the boy's body, that make me laugh out loud, especially the two page spread broken into multiple panels of the cat-boy's actions, including wrestling with laundry, playing with yarn, and trying to use the litter box.