Meera’s Superheroes

Meera is really — really — deeply interested in female superhero comic book volumes. These are not the sorts of things you’d typically find a 6-year-old reading (let alone their parents reading these to them) — they tend to be pretty graphic, and sometimes violent, and often involve subject matter that is way over the head of a young kid. But Meera is truly engaged in these, and really understands the storylines, and is more wrapped up in these than any other books she’s ever been exposed to.

Braydon reads these to Meera — it is something that the two of them share, and do together. They’ve read through the entire series of Spider-Girl and Super-Girl. And now they wait together, chomping at the bit in anticipation and excitement, for the next volume in each series to be released. Meera will often sit for long stretches of time pouring over volumes that they’ve already read, looking over the pages again and again, and following the storylines over and over.

Kyle and Owen (and me!) have no interest in these. This is Meera’s thing. And luckily, Braydon enjoys these books enough that he is happy to read them to her. But for most people who know Meera, they’d be shocked to find this out about her. She comes off as the stereotypical ‘Girly Girl,’ lover-of-all-things-frilly-and-pink, and enthralled with princesses and fairies and Barbies. The girl-power theme of these comics isn’t exactly what most people would imagine Meera being so into. But she is. And this is something that we love — and that we celebrate — about our girl. Deep down, she’s a complex little being with more to her than you’d imagine at first glance. She loves Fancy Nancy, and Ladybug Girl, and Berenstein Bears, but she’ll choose Super-Girl over any of those any day of the week. That’s an awesome aspect of Meera that not many people get to see.

Recently, I had a bunch of my graduate students over to our house. One of them happened to notice Meera’s collection of girl-power-comics on a shelf, and asked me about them. “Who reads those?,” he asked. When I told them that Meera does, he was immediately smitten. For someone who loves these sorts of comics, to discover a six-year-old kindred spirit is kind of a big deal. Yesterday, he brought me a new comic to give to Meera — Ms. Marvel. He had bought it, and read it over to make sure it was ok in his opinion, and then asked me to give it to her. I was so moved by this gesture, and happy to be the go-between in this brewing friendship between twenty-something-male sociology grad student and six-year-old-female first grader.

Ms. Marvel was not something on the radar of Braydon and me, but fortunately for Meera, she’s now got a hardcore comic reader who’s looking out for her. Ms. Marvel was in Meera’s hands as soon as she got home from school yesterday. She even brought Ms. Marvel to Kyle and Owen’s basketball game last night, and was pouring over it in the stands (photo below). And today, as soon as she got home from school, she was deep into it again (photo at top of this post). Braydon is reading it to her right now, as I write this post.

I don’t know where this whole girl-power-comic-volume thing is going, but it seems to be sticking… It has been well over a year of a constant and deep interest on the part of Meera. It has been a really intriguing part of Meera’s journey so far, and it has been so interesting for Braydon and I to watch this developing in her.