Have you read a comic book with the kid in your life lately?

I’m heading to Comic-Con International with my daughter next week, and it is a good time to remind parents and caregivers: comic books can change a kid’s life.

I passed my childhood comic book collection on to my daughter recently, and we sit down with the Los Angeles Times funny pages every Sunday–my favorite part of the newspaper for the last 30 years.

While writing Born Reading, I interviewed New Yorker art editor Françoise Mouly. She founded TOON Books in 2008, working with amazing artists to create graphic novels and picture books for kids. She outlined all of the ways comic books can train kids to survive in our rapidly evolving media environment.

Check it out:

“We live in an increasingly visual culture … If they know how to read comics, then they will know how to watch television and they’ll know how to look at YouTube videos on the net. Because they’ll see the visual narratives in a very grammatical way. It’s really good training for any kind of building block of understanding storytelling and narrative.”

(Image via makelessnoise)