For the first time, we got a tour of the Melissa & Doug showroom. Click below to see the new stuff coming out from Melissa & Doug Read the rest of this entry »
Josh Cooley put together a book of “Little Golden Book” style illustrations capturing scenes from some of your favorite movies. Movies that young children have no business seeing. Hilarious stuff.
Check out his blog, Cooley!
High quality prints and the collected book will be available this fall.
Seen via DaddyTypes.com
Posted in books, cringe, linky, news, picture|Comments Off on Awesome new “kids” books for parents…Movies ‘R Fun
If Your Kid Eats This Book, Everything Will Still Be Okay: How to Know if Your Child’s Injury or Illness Is Really an Emergency
My wife and I have spent a few hours at the Emergency room over fevers and sprains over the last two years. Some were indeed serious, some were nothing more than time and money drains. (Thanks for waiting in our room surrounded by sick people for 5 hours, that’ll be $200 please)
Anyway, I will be picking up this book soon. Looks helpful. This may also be a good present for the newly expecting?
I went and checked out the Book Expo in NYC this past weekend. I saw some really cool stuff for us and our kids. I’ll have some reviews and links coming shortly.
Yesterday morning I spoke with Magic 106.5‘s Jack Logar about some of the cool baby stuff we saw at Toy Fair. Click below to listen to the bit, and to check out the video from Toy Fair. Read the rest of this entry »
Today I took my 13 month old son on a new adventure. We travelled down to Arlington VA to Aladdin’s Lamp, children’s book store, to attend a book signing from David Carter.
If you’ve been to the children’s section of a book store, you probably have seen some of Mr. Carter’s books, including One Red Dot and Big Bug Book. He does some amazing pop-up books with very intricate paper engineering, and always surprises even the likes of me (I go to Toy Fair every year, it is very difficult to wow me, sorry but it’s true.) But my son is a big fan of the Feely Bugs book. This is not a pop up book, but a texture book, each page has a new bug (puffy bug, crinkly bug) which is perfect for his little hands. He loves turning the pages and then spending time getting acquainted with each texture. We particularly like “sticky bugs” which is the backside of a sticker. We still have one bug “un covered” to maintain its stickyness as long as possible.
Anyway, I carry this book everywhere in my manly diaper bag to give to my son whenever he needs a little help focusing on not being fussy. So when I saw that David would be signing books and holding a pop up book workshop at Aladdin’s Lamp, we made the trek. David was very nice and signed not only my son’s well-worn copy of Feely Bugs, but also a new pop-up book I bought, Alpha Bugs (a pop up books going over the alphabet). My little guy was a little young for doing the workshop (elementary school age kids were loving it) so hopefully he’ll come back to the area in a few years.
I have to point you to Mr. Carter’s web site. Just like how I offer all kinds of DIY projects and books you can download, David has pop-up templates you can download and assemble with your children. Fantastic! Check out his official site Pop Up Books.com for lots of fun.
I decided to make my own cloth crinkle book for my son, and now you can too. It looks like a newspaper, it’s got high contrast and full color images inside, and that crinkly plastic in between pages. But when the kid is holding it, it looks like they’re reading the paper. Just like Daddy
This project involves sewing and ironing, so you may take this opportunity to forward this to someone you know and say “This would make a great gift!”
Here is the Newspaper PDF you can download for free, print out backwards and iron-on to white cloth. There are some jokes in there too, so enjoy that.
Here is the Reversed Print PDF if that makes it easier.
Check out our other Free Children’s books available for download. Read the rest of this entry »
Several times a year, Wizard Entertainment publishes Toy Wishes a magazine for kids and their parents, outlining the toys that are coming out in the current season. This is the spring issue, so look forward to lots of toys based on the hot summer movie properties, such as Hulk, Indiana Jones, Speed Racer (biiig reviews from me very soon), Iron Man, and Kung Fu Panda..
If you have a hard time watching long stretches of Dora the Explorer, you are missing out on the advertisements your kids are seeing. This magazine tries to sum up the stuff that’s coming out, but since its from a third party publisher, you’re getting an unbiased view. There aren’t reviews necessarily, more of a buffet presentation of what’s coming soon, prices, and appropriate age ranges.
I particularly liked the articles that both myself and a young child would enjoy about professional toy designers, detailing how they got started, what they did in school, and what they enjoy most now. There was also a thorough article about throwing sensible birthday parties that aren’t way over the top, or putting you in debt.
The magazine is nicely divided up into genres, such as Television properties, outdoorsy toys, action figures, and active toys (such as bikes and sporting equipment).
Think back to when that inch thick Sears Wish Book arrived, and there was a two page spread of Star Wars figures layed out with the Emperial Shuttle, or the AT-AT. Instead of directly selling you anything, it’s giving you a compact run down of what to look for. I do like how it’s appropriate for young readers, and their parents. There are some sweet massive Sweepstakes inside as well.
The bottom line is that, yes, they’re promoting the “buy-me’s” you’re going to receive as a parent this summer, but it’s not a catalog from one company or another, so you’re getting a more balanced view of what is out there.
You can pick up this magazine just about anywhere, but here is their official web site ToyWishes.com
Just a side note, Wizard Entertainment also publishes ToyFare Magazine, a journal of happenings in the toy collector world, and Wizard Magazine, the definitive comic book collectors’ magazine. I have written some freelance articles for ToyFare.