Drawing Comics Is Easy! (Except When It's Hard)

An instructional book for kids on drawing comics? There are plenty of those—but none like this one. Kitchen reportedly assembled the whole thing in a few days, at the age of seven (she's now 9). It's a delightful step-by-step guide to her process of making comic strips, especially about her cat character, Denis (who shares his first name with her cartoonist/publisher father). All cartoonists wrestle with some of the issues she explains, including word balloon placement, color theory, light sources, suggesting body language, correcting mistakes in composition and facial expressions (she's got a particular gift for those). Others are a bit more specific to her work: she demonstrates the difference between a "cartoon cat" and a "realistic cat" (shading!) and options for drawing vase patterns, birthday parties, five varieties of bushes and "a few types of handsome men," including "the disco type" and "the robber type." Kitchen draws and writes like a seven-year-old, for sure—but a really good seven-year-old, and her exuberance is inspiring. The volume is filled out with a sampling of her Denis strips, as well as ads for yet-to-be-drawn anthologies. When she's 17, she may be mortified that this book exists; when she's 27, she'll realize how cool it is. (July)