Pow! Sock! Comics are for kids! PW Children’s Bookshelf has the scoop on Diamond’s new initiative to bridge the gap for comics aimed at kids:

Diamond Book Distributors, the book trade affiliate of Diamond Comics Distributors, is launching a new children’s comics and books division, and has hired Scholastic editor-at-large Janna Morishima to direct the new unit. Morishima will be based in New York and will start on December 11.

Kuo-Yu Liang, v-p of sales and marketing at Diamond Book Distributors, said the new division will be called Diamond Kids Group and said that comics and kids’ books are “the next platform for major growth” at Diamond. Liang described Morishima, who worked to adapt Jeff Smith’s popular graphic novel Bone to the book trade for Scholastic, as “very smart, has experience and is very connected to the kids’ books world.” He said her role at DKG will be to help comics publishers reformat and relaunch comics in the book market, and to help trade book publishers learn and enter the graphic novel market. “She’ll work with publishers to acquire new properties, both comics and conventional kids’ books, and to work with store buyers, the media and organizations like the Children’s Book Council,” Liang said.

More in the link.

As we’ve previously noted here several times, kids book buyers at the chains are not as comics savvy as the regular GN buyers, and this has been the biggest hurdle for all the new lines of books aimed at children. Diamond stepping in to help heal the wounds is a long overdue move on someone’s part.