Librarians and booksellers came together on Friday, January 24^th at the American Library Association’s Midwinter Meeting to celebrate the launch of UDON Entertainment’s new imprint of manga for kids.

Attendees were treated to dessert, champagne and a look at the first four titles to be published by UDON Kids. Janna Morishima, director of Diamond Kids Group for Diamond Book Distributors and Eva Volin, supervising children's librarian for the Alameda Free Library in Alameda, CA, spoke about manga’s popularity and the need for kid-friendly material. UDON Project Manager Jim Zubkavich introduced the upcoming titles and addressed UDON Kids’ mission to publish age-appropriate manga created especially for kids.

Featuring cute, clear artwork and young protagonists which kids can relate to, the upcoming series will include:

The Big Adventures of Majoko(b/w, $7.99) The heart-warming adventures of Nana, a shy girl who becomes best friends with Majoko, a little wizard girl who lives in a parallel world. Their friendship grows as they share adventures both in the ordinary world and Majoko’s Land of Magic.
	Ninja Baseball Kyuma (b/w, $7.99) A Bad News Bears-type baseball team signs up a ninja kid to help them win – but he doesn’t know how to play baseball! Can his ninja skills make up for his baseball blunders?
Fairy Idol Kanon (b/w, $7.99) Through enduring friendship and help from a magical fairy, schoolgirl Kanon and her friends might just become Japan’s next pop music sensation.
	Swans in Space (color, $8.99) A goofy, comic adventure about an ordinary girl who gets sucked into space by a weird schoolmate to patrol the universe aboard a swan-shaped spaceship.

Attendees were enthusiastic about the upcoming series, even cheering at the description of Swans in Space as “science fiction…for girls”.

UDON Kids has also launched a website - Mangaforkids.com – which includes previews of each of the forthcoming titles, information about how to read manga and more.

The Big Adventures of Majoko and Ninja Baseball Kyuma will be launching in April 2009, followed by Fairy Idol Kanon in May and Swans in Space in June.