Let me draw a picture for you

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   Well, according to The New York Times, these are the best illustrated books for children this year. I don't think they come in any particular order and we also have to remember that the newspaper was also one of the main instigators of the war in Iraq.

   Children Make Terrible Pets — A young bear finds a lost boy and attempts to train him as a pet.

   Seasons — A French artist's images about the seasons, from a single green bud to a cloud shadow on a beach.

   Shadow —  In her family's attic, a girl’s shadow play comes to life.

   Big Red Lollipop — Rubina’s first American birthday party she’s ever attended is spoiled by her little sister.

   Henry in Love — A lovesick cat courts a winsome bunny.

   A Sick Day for Amos McGee — When a zookeeper comes down with a cold the animals travel to his home to take care of him.

   Subway — A celebration of New York's underground rail system.

   Bink & Gollie — A picture book about two friends, one cheerful, fearless and messy; the other skinny, precise and arrogant.

   Busing Brewster — In the early 1970s black siblings are bused to a new school.

   Here Comes the Garbage Barge! — A simple picture book about saving the planet, a environmental primer for young readers.
  No matter what the selections, I can still see my daughter's rapt attention when we read any Dr. Seuss book. The illustrations are captivating and the rhymes are divine.

It's more 'WTF' than 'Ni Hao'

  A popular Nick Jr. show, Ni Hao, Kai Lan, unfortunately has a few troubles.
   1) The show is missing the boat on subtitles and pronunciation guides. Maybe it's because some of the Chinese words sound like vulgarities in English (Shiiiiia, for instance). Still, It would help parents and children alike if we knew precisely what it was we're supposed to be saying and what it means.
   2) While stuffed toy versions of the show's characters can be found in toy stores, I know I'm not going to be purchasing one of Kai Lan's friends: Hoho.
   I don't care about what gender the little monkey is supposed to be (and it's not quite clear), I don't want my daughter cavorting closely with anything that remotely sounds like "prostitute."
   3) Without fail one of the characters, usually Hoho, throws a hissy fit until after much discussion the bruised ego is assuaged by talking out the problem.
   Our daughter has begun to mimic the hissy fit machinations, something we have had to sternly purge from her persona. As my wife acutely points out, no Chinese mother in her right mind would try this soft approach to bad behavior.
   Other than that, the cartoon teaches the importance of listening in order to understand how someone else might feel if they are left out or different or misunderstood.
   And again we have no parents in the cartoon [much like most of what's offered on children's TV], but Kai Lan's gentle grandfather, Ye Ye, often guides the little ones through rough patches and teaches them games and skills.

Now you see it; now you can't

   Well, it appears we have reached the breaking point of technology for children. As the various entertainment platforms have been racing to make everything 3D, Nintendo has issued a warning on their 3DS games for children.
    The company is admitting that the eyesight of children under six could be harmed by 3D games played on Nintendo's new handheld console.
  Nintendo said specialists had warned of possible damage that could be caused by 3D games which present different images to the right and left eye.
   Nintendo says younger children should only play 2D versions of 3DS games.
  The top screen of the new handheld is able to show 3D images without the need for special glasses.
  The company warns parents to turn off this function if the handheld is going to be used by a child under six years of age. 
   Nintendo joins Sony and Toshiba in alerting people to the ill effects that can attend watching 3D movies or playing 3D games.
   My suggestion to the entire issue is to give your child under six a book instead of a video game .... or crayons and some paper ... or go to the park ... or take a nap ... yadda, yadda, yadda.

Steve, I love you but ...

... each episode of Blues Clues ends with a salutation to a lie —
     "You can do anything that you wanna do."
   Earnest in its appeal, buoyant in its confidence building, it is nevertheless a lie nailed into the soft heads which are mesmerized by Mr. Burns googley eyes.
   At heart, the liberal mantra is well-meaning: through hard work, help and a tad of luck, you may be able to conquer a discipline to the point that you can be crowned an expert or guru or president. But even the president does not get to do "anything" he wants to do. Because he (and before too long, she) is saddled with responsibility, just like the rest of us.
   I would contend most of the time we must do what we have to do, whether we like it or not. That is responsibility: to ourselves, to our family, to society as a whole.
   If we all felt we could "do anything that you wanna do," there would be a wreck at every intersection followed by a shoot-out and a chase. Laws would have no merit as they would impede on doing whatever it is I wanna do.
   Now I'm sure Libertarians have an answer to this one, but I'm more concerned about what my daughter hears and interprets as the truth and for this reason the popularity of Blues Clues makes me cringe, because you can't jump off a roof and fly just because you "wanna".

What's in a name? Plenty

   There's always much ado about what to name the offspring. Family names seem almost immediately considered (with certain ones immediately nixed).
  One other issue, is where the actual pronunciation in its original tongue can make for some beautiful and exotic sounds, when the name is Anglicized — or more brutally 'Americanized' — the result could scar the child especially in the early years when the little monsters earn their monikers without trying.
   But with all that in mind, the one other factor one should consider is the length of the child's name and while it may seem shallow, consider that day care operations require you to write you child's name on every piece of clothing and sleeping needs that the munchkin will need.
   Hear that Summerlee or Mikayleigh or Aloysius or Damaskenos or Tamerlane?
   Keep it short. Keep it simple. You'll thank me later.

It's about time

   No matter how many things there are to do, there's only 24 hours in a day: 18 available ones if you cheat yourself two hours of sleep.
  And yet our society pushes us sometimes at hyper-speed to accomplish more or take on more that can possibly be managed. The relentless drumbeat of "news" and hucksters we are subjected to reminds us of all the things we "should" or "need" to have. This vomitous barrage of dilemmas and choices and guilt and need by themselves can drain the soul of a single person. But when, not so much a marriage, but a family — a child — enters the scene, the choices dilemmas, obliteration of time, are at times overwhelming, at times even temporarily paralyzing.

Breathe in, breathe out

   Graduation ceremonies and gowns for VPK participants? You've got to be kidding me!
   I know in an earlier post I basked in my daughter's glow of her first poop in the pot, but we didn't turn it into some kind of conquest of Everest or anything.
   But yes, a couple of weeks back as my 3 year old and I arrived for her daily day-care shenanigans, we were beset by a sea of folding chairs, replete with a cacophony of parents and grandmas grappling with cameras and jostling for just the right position to capture the moment of joy capping the tot's mastery of SHOWING UP FOR SCHOOL.
   Good God, what's next? A gold star for successfully breathing?

Too much time, too little sense

   Well, South Korea has much to be proud of not the least the fastest broadband available nationally in the world.
   But with that speed comes consequences (there are always consequences for having the most or fastest of anything). The need for speed has turned some of the youngsters into addicts; crazed enough to earn their way into "boot camps" of sorts to shake the Web monkeys off their backs. As far back as 2007, South Korea knew it had a serious problem.
   "Inmates" at the Jump Up Internet Rescue School "are pushed over assault courses and learn to ride horses, as well as being given therapy workshops on more creative pursuits such as pottery and drumming.
   But the aim is not to wean them off drugs, alcohol or crime, but on their obsessive use of computers in a country with almost universal Internet access."
   In South Korea, where 90 per cent of homes have high-speed broadband connections and some online gameplayers have died from exhaustion after playing for days on end, police have found a new wrinkle in the virtual world or virtual worlders.
   According to CNN, police arrested the parents of a toddler who starved to death while the pair were glued to raising a virtual child online.
   The 3-month-old daughter was fed once a day between epic stretches in a local Internet cafe, where they were raising a virtual child in the fantasy role-playing game.
   Prius Online is a 3-D game in which players nurture an online companion, Anima, a young girl with mysterious powers who grows and increases her skills as the game progresses.
   Apparently the couple had lost their jobs and used the game as an escape from reality, especially after the birth of their premature baby.
   It may be wise to keep an eye on the people of the peninsula to see what might be coming down the road toward us.

"Can you hear me now?"

   It's always amused me in this country how, if something is deficient or problematic, that the solution always seems to hinge on 'more' of whatever.

   Years ago I was in a Frisch's restaurant taking in a breakfast buffet when I noticed the  sausage gravy tasted as though someone had dumped an ashtray into the mix. When I informed a waitress of the situation she replied, "Oh, well, we're about to bring out some more in a minute." More lousy food is not the solution. This concept, of course, was captured in the movie Annie Hall, where Woody Allen recounts one of his favorite jokes: Two women are sitting in a Catskill resort having lunch and the first one says, "The food here is terrible." The second one responds with, "I know, and such small portions."

   So it was no surprise really when wireless companies heard the wails from shell-shocked parents regarding their little heathens running up additional minutes on calling plans. From a marketing viewpoint the worst thing the companies wanted was to lose customers. Armed with the knowledge that American parents are loathe to rein in the children's' bad habits, gradually went to extended plans and finally "unlimited" plans.

   Is it me or is there something wrong with handing an adolescent a cell phone that has "unlimited" minutes?

  When have the words "children" and "unlimited" ever meant anything good?

   And let's not let scientific study get in the way of the temporary mollification of kids (Study Links Brain Cancer to Children Using Cell Phones) as long as 'more is better' in this country everybody feels they are getting a deal.

Twitter? Twitcher is more like it

  Amazing to me how little media attention was paid to this; perhaps the Information Biggies quietly backed out of the room when this item came across the desk.

  But to my surprise, it was the last story of Wednesday's ABC World News Tonight [now with Diane Sawyer {and I dunno, she seems a bit too cloying to the camera for me, I think the network is going to lose some viewers}].

   But the story in question regards the screamer from a Kaiser Family Foundation study entitled "Daily media use among children and teens up dramatically from five years ago."

  Here is the summary of what they found, under the subheading — Most Youth Say They Have No Rules About How Much Time They Can Spend With TV, Video Games, or Computers.

   "With technology allowing nearly 24-hour media access as children and teens go about their daily lives, the amount of time young people spend with entertainment media has risen dramatically, especially among minority youth ... 8-18 year-olds devote an average of 7 hours and 38 minutes (7:38) to using entertainment media across a typical day (more than 53 hours a week). And because they spend so much of that time ‘media multitasking’ (using more than one medium at a time), they actually manage to pack a total of 10 hours and 45 minutes (10:45) worth of media content into those 7½ hours.

  The amount of time spent with media increased by an hour and seventeen minutes a day over the past five years, from 6:21 in 2004 to 7:38 today. And because of media multitasking, the total amount of media content consumed during that period has increased from 8:33 in 2004 to 10:45 today."

   That's TEN HOURS AND 45 MINUTES in an instantaneous, unlimited technological whirlwind of consumption: constant stimulation which doesn't allow the mind to settle on one focused, uncluttered train of thought because it's crammed into 7½ hours.

  Okay, that leaves 16½ hours left in the cycle and let's be optimistic and say the child gets 8 hours of sleep, which leaves 8½ hours.

   Eight and one-half hours a day.

   Eight and one-half hours a day that needs to include: time in a classroom (and maybe I'm wrong, but doesn't a child in an American public school spend at least five hours a day in a classroom?); time for homework; time for meals; time for bathing and going to the bathroom; time for exercise (perhaps they are running with their iPods and watching TV at the same time); time for after-school activities such as sports or music lessons, etc.; time for housework, or cutting the lawn, or reintroducing themselves to their parents.

   This should have been the lead story for every news outlet, but then again, they're part of the problem.

A moving experience

   Being the first-time parents of a toddler presents all manner of thresholds to conquer and potty-training could possibly be the most-prized achievement.

   As the little one has stuck with us through a number of household moves to differing climates — not to mention the varied day-care that accompanies the migration — it's not really a surprise to have a bit of a struggle 'taking to the pot,' as it were.

   This past week we have indeed climbed that mountain, I'm speaking, of course, of my daughter's first 'poop in the pot,' a glorious achievement I had never thought to be as ... well ... moving.

   Such momentous was the occasion that a photo documenting the excretion had to be snapped. Exhorting the toddler not to 'touch anything,' I exited the room to snatch the camera and quickly return.

   As I composed the frame to capture the essence of the occasion, my daughter — in her infinite wisdom — peered into the pot and shouted "Say 'cheese,' poop!"

   {Given the literal nature of the achievement, you can understand the rather banal illustration that accompanies today's post as opposed to, well, you know ...}

   The child's thrill of achievement was surpassed only by mine (I mean, this is real progress) and we celebrated with the only at-hand snack for the triumphant: Nonni's Chocolate Decadence biscotti and some milk.

   I can't wait until the first time she kicks some boy's ass. Jeez, what a meal that's going to be.

God save the Queen (and the jam)

   For those unaware of the childrens' television industry, believe me when I tout the universal popularity of The Backyardigans.

   Hatched from the mind of a near-Pittsburgh native, The Backyardigans appeals to both parent and child (not like that relentless shoutfest Yo Gabba Gabba {even though DJ Lance is quite the dude}).

   The animations of suburban animals with urban names is witty and instructive, multicultural without the usual cloying PC preachiness and cranks out music you can dance to.

   The Backyardigans are so popular, in fact, that BBC editors in the United Kingdom only make minor changes to the dialogue in order to make it more palatable for the average snot-nosed Crumpet-Stuffer.

   [Okay. Fair enough. I mean {for instance} coming around to "knock you up" means totally different things in Britain than it does in the U.S.]

   The penultimate action of each Backyardigans episode is punctuated by the growling of one of the character's tummies and the ensuing invitation for a snack at somebody's house. Interestingly enough, the cultural aspect which receives the most attention from BBC editors is comestibles considering that — globally speaking — decent food is something the English seem to know very little about.

   Let's see if we can make sense of the Brits' snips.

   In the episode Horsing Around, the suggested snack of blueberry muffins is whacked from the soundtrack and changed to fresh fruit salad. [a healthier substitution. ok.]

   Jam seems a vital part of the UK diet.

   In the calypso-driven Cave Party, a snack of cinnamon toast at Pablo's house is apparently deemed too exotic for English children and thus changed to jam and toast, and in High Tea peanut butter and jelly is changed to peanut butter and jam.

   Thank God and the Queen that someone is protecting the tiny psyches of lily-livered limeys who no doubt would be irreparably scarred by the exposure to the utterance of "jelly."

   But the work is not done for the Protectors of Chinless Wonder Culture (do you suppose a committee handles this editing job?).

   In the episode entitled It's Great to Be a Ghost, the snack of apples is changed to peaches, and in Castaways applesauce is silenced for apple juice. [this is not a joke]

   I mean, does it come as any surprise that this prissy empire of Fog-Breathers has given us words like "ponce" and "pusillanimous"?

Can I get a doctor?

   I know it may seem I beat up on Toys "R" Us a bit too much, but when you overwhelm your competition to become the bully of the industry, you can expect some deficiencies to emerge.

  Let's take my most recent visit as I attempted to purchase a doctor's kit for my daughter (who had days earlier been strutting around with a make-believe thermometer declaring, "I'm a doctor").

  Mind you our nearest T"R"U establishment includes a Babies "R" Us, so the place is massive, I figured I'd need help locating the item.

  Though glad I grabbed a clerk to help locate the doctor's kit, I was disappointed (as was he) that we couldn't locate the item despite being instructed by someone {allegedly} more versed in the store's merchandising that it was located in the Imaginarium section.

   [Imaginarium used to be a great store that I used to go into before I even knew I was going to be a father: a vast array of items that made science more accessible to young minds {and dimmer one's such as mine}. Unfortunately the chain struggled and was apparently cannibalized in 1997 after a bankruptcy filing.]

   So the clerk and I searched through Project Runway designer sets; Barbie and her plethora of fashion trend accouterment; Dream Dazzlers chic salon stylist sets; Bratz dolls and their accouterment; Disney Princess dolls and their accouterment; LIV fashion dolls and their accouterment ... you get the picture, and could not find anything approaching a doctor's kit.

   I thanked him for 'helping' and continued to hunt for another product. Minutes later the clerk reappeared with another lead which proved fruitful: a few Fisher Price Doctor's kits located on the very back wall of the store!

  Thrilled to find exactly what I wanted, I still could not help but think — as I trudged past aisle after aisle of over-priced princess and World Wide Wrestling-themed junk — that it should be no surprise the as a nation we are getting our collective asses kicked by the rest of the globe.

  I guess most of the doctors' kits are in India.

Let's get cereal for a moment

   Taking another swipe at childrens' obesity, General Mills announced plans today to drastically reduce the amount of sugar in Lucky Charms, Trix and Cocoa Puffs.

   The cereal pusher appears to be bowing (thankfully) to nutritional value concerns from consumers, regulators and health groups.

   Sugar levels in Cocoa Puffs will be reduced by a quarter — from 18 to 11 grams per serving.

   My favorite cereal for myself and my daughter — Cheerios — already has only 1 gram of sugar a serving and was not a product included in the overhaul.

    General Mills said the healthier, slimmed-down products will begin appearing in 2010.

   The Minneapolis-based company follows the health-affirming move by Kellogg's who last year cut up to 3 grams of sugar from such cereals as Froot Loops, Apple Jacks and Corn Pops. Kellogg also boosted fiber content to some of its products.

   Post Foods has also sucked as much as 20 percent of the sugar from Cocoa Pebbles and Fruity Pebbles while increasing vitamin content.

   Now if we can separate the little ones from video games and get them off the couch we may start to see some wight come off as well.

Not too Glad about this ad

   The most recent Glad ForceFlex television ad leaves me wondering about Momma's attention to hygiene.

   We are presented with what appears to be the perky, 'perfect Mom' — very early thirties (possibly late 20s), white, polite, smartly dressed — encouraging her son the importance of taking out the garbage {because, of course, she has never performed such a nasty task and is in need of a male six year old to haul off a bag that's as big as he is}.

   Since there is no dad in the ad, Glad appeals to the single moms, too, provided she has a son to "do the dirty deed." [Glad would have never cast a little girl to take care of this business].

  "Think you can handle it," Mom queries the defenseless — and not too enthused — young lad.

  I'm also guessing this 'perfect Mom' is ignorant of the fact {or she doesn't care} that her wee offspring then rolls the overstuffed garbage bag on the floor, carries it on his shoulder and then rolls it down the garage {or, incredibly, the basement} steps before wrapping his arms around it to hoist the now grimy bag into the garbage can.

  The commercial ends with a big Glad logo and some crapola about their wonderful product.

   What we do not see is whether the filthy moppet gets a big slurpy hug from Mom for a 'job well done,' or whether she shrieks at the putrid sight of her now stinking, germ-laden Schlabberkinder.

   Perhaps as the Glad campaign matures Tide can piggy-back a commercial.