World classics illustrated
Alternate entry title: Multiculturalism lite.
When I was in fourth grade or so, I read several Classics Illustrated comics (see also Classics Illustrated covers). I think that was the form in which I "read" A Tale of Two Cities, Master of the World, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, and other canonical works of Western literature, most of which (sadly) I never got around to reading the originals of.
But those weren't the first great works of literature I read in comic-book form. When I was much younger, I encountered a set of comic-book versions of classical Indian works; I think my father's ex-wife had worked for a company that distributed (or possibly just sold) them here in California. It was a series called Amar Chitra Katha, published by India Book House. That was my first exposure to Krishna, the Ramayana, and the Mahabharata. Those are still all jumbled together in my head—those blue-skinned holy guys (though nobody ever seemed to notice they were blue); those kings with white beards and golden crowns; Hanuman the monkey king; the villainous ten-headed demon Ravana; the five Pandava princes and their shared wife Draupadi; Krishna; Yama the lord of death; Rama and his wife Sita; exile in the forest; war chariots; elephants; lots of names I could never keep straight; a bow nobody but Arjuna could string. . . . Good stuff, and I remember a surprising number of things about it given that I was probably six or eight years old when I read 'em. But I don't think I had any real sense of them being separate works about different people.
Anyway, now you, too, can read the definitive comic-book version of the Ramayana online, thanks to AskAsia, "a K-12 resource of the Asia Society."
Perhaps someday I'll read the real thing.
