I certainly wouldn't try to be condescending. My assumption is that you have to amuse both the kid in the lap and the person who owns the lap, and not do short shrift to either side of the equation. One of the artists for Little Lit , David Macaulay , the author of Cathedral , Baaa , and The Way Things Work , used this as an opportunity to learn how comics work. The sequence of pictures gives you an overall sense of the narrative, while the short bursts of language offer texture and detail. If a kid wants to know why that little creature is crying, he's compelled to decode those few words in the balloon.
Comics can be hard to learn, but they're a self-teaching machine.
That's why kids can learn from them. We sacrificed our own prized comic book collection to our kids, Nadja, now 13, and Dashiell, who's eight, so that they could learn to read from them as well. Kids may not have a lot of experience, but they're got a wealth of very complex feelings and emotions and ideas running through their heads. In Little Lit , there are touchstones that I wish I'd had access to when I was little. Comics help prepare you for the world.