Girl-Friendly Comics Arrive.

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Author: Bean, Joy

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Headlines are filled with news of the trend that teens, notably teenage girls, are into reading manga. But what about younger girls who like reading comic books but aren't old enough for the content in many of the manga titles filling bookstore shelves? Random House and Hyperion hope they have the answer in separate girl-friendly projects.

Babymouse is a graphic novel series targeted to girls in elementary school, with art in a black, white and pink scheme. Random House is debuting the series next January with two titles: Babymouse: Queen of the World and Babymouse: Our Hero . They will have a combined first printing of 100,000. Five titles are currently signed at Random, with one each season after the initial release.

Editor-at-large Shana Corey described the books as "Mean Girls meets Hello Kitty." The star of the series, Babymouse, is an elementary-school girl (er, mouse) who deals with the same issues and problems many kids do: an annoying younger sibling, getting invited to a slumber party and playing dodgeball in gym class. The books aren't didactic, Corey said, but they do have attitude: "They're smart and sassy and laugh-out-loud funny, but they never talk down to kids."

The author of the books, Jennifer L. Holm (whose previous novel, Our Only May Amelia, won a Newbery Honor in 2000), grew up in a house filled with comic books. Later, Holm and her youngest brother, Matthew, who's a graphic designer and book illustrator in New York, would meet "and gripe about how there were never any girl comics around." Holm recalled, "I had this image in my head of a feisty little mouse. I drew it on a napkin and showed it to Matt." The Babymouse concept grew out of that drawing.

Mice aren't the only animals that are hot in the graphic world. Fashion Kitty , a book similar in format and color scheme to the Babymouse stories, was published last month by Hyperion and features a seemingly normal cat with an interest in fashion. When Kiki Kittie makes a wish on her eighth birthday, she becomes a superhero of sorts--Fashion Kitty, whose job it is to save other felines from making fashion faux pas. Executive editor Alessandra Balzer considers the book a hybrid between a picture book and a graphic novel because it combines comic book panels with some pages that feature traditional illustrations.

Author Charise Mericle Harper had previously published picture books and came to Balzer with Fashion Kitty. Hyperion has signed up two other Fashion Kitty books, which will be released at a rate of one a year. The publisher is advertising the first book in ElleGirl magazine, and it was included in a Book Sense white box mailing.

While these books are a first for girls, the editors don't think acquiring the titles was a gamble. "With manga sales ballooning over the past three years, I think the gamble would be not jumping on a property as original as Babymouse," Corey said. She thinks Babymouse will work not only because it's younger, but because it doesn't have the violence and sex that cause some parents to worry about manga.

PHOTO (COLOR): A mousse with attitude for elementary school girls.

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By Joy Bean