

Above: the age old question -- "Marvel or DC?" Nathan seems to prefer DC characters so far. He will be having some discussions in the future with his old man about this!
MOLESKINE is the legendary notebook that has held the inspirations and ideas of everyone from Van Gogh, Picasso and Hemingway to famed author, Bruce Chatwin. Artists, authors, and geniuses of all variety have long appreciated the simplicity and superior functionality of these notebooks.It looks like I'm in good company! I tried it out tonight while I was waiting at the mall. It is very nice paper and a nice sturdy but flexible sketchbook. I'm thinking Mondays will be Moleskine Mondays, and I'll post a recent sketch from the sketchbook. My New Year's resolution is to try to make better use of the time I spend just waiting (at the doctor's office, etc.) and I'm going to try to keep this baby with me!
Originally these books were produced by small French bookbinders who supplied the Parisian stationery shops frequented by the international avant-garde. However, In 1986, the last manufacturer of Moleskine, a family operation in Tours, closed and Moleskines were gone – but not forgotten. As a result of their previous popularity and demand, they did return. In 1998, a small Milanese publisher brought these books back for writers, artists, travelers and all free-thinkers around the globe.
Some parents and teachers regard comics, with their sentences jammed into bubbles and their low word-to-picture ratio, as part of the problem when it comes to low reading scores and the much-lamented decline in reading for pleasure. But a growing cadre of educators is looking to comics as part of the solution.This is no news to me and to many others who learned to read by reading comics, but it's great to see the Establishment coming around.
"It's very much a teacher-led kind of movement in that teachers are looking for ways to engage their children, and they're finding some of that in comic books," said Michael Bitz, who founded the Comic Book Project as a graduate student and is now its director. "For kids who may be struggling and for kids who may be new to the English language, that visual sequence is a very powerful tool."