Happy New Year! It's been quite a while since our last update. We closed the year with the prerequisite eating and celebrating over the holidays, and since the beginning of the month we've been caught up with planning for 2011 content and getting ourselves caught up with books we still wanted to review from last year.

One of the books I read over the holidays was the incredibly moving Vietnamerica, G.B. Tran’s inspiring memoir about growing up Vietnamese in America. G.B.'s parents had always encouraged G.B. to travel back to Vietnam with them over the years, but he declined. When he finally decided to make the trip, he reconnected with a past that he had never even imagined. The book is an excellent work that speaks to cultural politics as well as personal identity and the ways we begin to become more and more like our families even as we spend years trying to rebel against them. It has a wonderfully universal message, so I was eager to discuss how it was making the book and what it meant to him. Check out the interview to see what he had to say.

In the meantime, one of our most regular contributors, Dr. Katie Monnin, took some time out to talk with James Bucky Carter and Erik Evensen, the creators behind Super-Powered Word Study. Their book examines how graphic novels can be used to develop word power in young learners and reluctant readers.

I first met Bucky back in 2008 at a comics-related conference at Fordham University. He made a presentation to a roomful of teachers and librarians that showed a page from Chris Claremont’s run on Uncanny X-Men. The page was largely made up of text, which is much different from the way comics look today. In fact, I remember how long it took me to read an average comic book when I was a kid back in the ’80s…it was quite a long time compared to today. Truthfully, I miss how verbose comics used to be. Yes, they are illustrated, and that is what makes them special. But the word “book” is in their name as well, and I’d love to see that word emphasized more. If it were, imagine how much more respect comics and graphic novels would convey in our culture.

A superhero duo themselves, Dr. James Bucky Carter and Erik Evensen team up to give educators Super-Powered Word Study, a textbook that uses comics to teach words and word parts to students in grades five and above. By Katie Monnin

Are you ready for a hot summer? That’s what 2011 is shaping up to be, with a multitude of top comic-book movies being released. Check out the details on Thor, Green Lantern, Captain America, and X-Men: First Class here!

Return of the Dapper Men by Jim McCann and Janet Lee

An epic fairy tale that's as vividly imaginative as it is wonderfully drawn, Return of the Dapper Men is a magical treat. Set in a world where children who never age past 11 coexist peacefully with robots, it's a bright, sprawling tale that seems to ramble far from where it started without ever feeling as though it has stumbled even a step out of its way. Reviewed by John Hogan

Nancy Drew, Vampire Slayer, Part One by Stefan Petrucha and Sarah Kinney

Nancy Drew finds a new friend in a mysterious boy named Gregor. Does he have a disease that keeps him out of sunlight, or is he a vampire? Reviewed by Danica Davidson

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