When my wife and I thought child 3 would be children 3 & 4, we fancied Daria & Darian as a great girl/boy combo. Cute 'n' clever, and sure to be hated by them when they grew up to become individuals.

I couldn't get behind you on your comments about the animation industry—I felt they painted the industry with too broad a brush—but I feel you're spot on in this column. I am constantly puzzled by people who put up a gate towards literacy. I grew up on comics and Hardy Boy books. I learned vocabulary, culture, and politics from them. Those books lead me to mythology, science fiction & cryptozoology. Still people didn't approve, but I kept reading. The "classics" both modern & past seemed drab to me, but by college I was reading books on self-help, psychology, history, politics, and culture. I still read comics, graphic novels, and manga. Today I write my own books and I read more than many of those people who disapproved of my reading materials. I thank my mum who bought me my first comic books and hunted down Hardy Boy books for me. If she had forced me to read "drab" classics I might never have learned to love reading.