Daddy Mojo

Lilo & Stitch: A Live-Action Review for Kids and Parents

There are a string of Disney movies I didn’t see from the late 90s through 2010, including Lilo & Stitch. The perceived counter programming about Stitch being an uncontrollable, cute, alien mess was a welcome characteristic, but not enough to pull me into theaters or give up 90 minutes. Because I was unfamiliar with the specifics of Lilo & Stitch, it afforded a unique opportunity to review the film without any previous bias or memory from the original. Unfortunately for those who hold Lilo & Stitch in high regard, it might not follow the same welcome path that the original created.

Lilo & Stitch, is the live-action film a comedy or a drama? Fans of the original animated film will dig it, new audiences will be mildly amused at this kid’s film.

Irreverence only goes so far to being entertaining

Bearsuit Turtle Makes a Friend, a funny, absurd, instant classic

From the moment adults catch a glimpse of Bearsuit Turtle Makes a Friend they’ll suspect it’s a timeless illustrated book. The ‘bear’s’ mouth is black and glossy, begging for fingers and hands of any age to run across it. You are an adult, with a “real job”, decades past the enjoyment of such illustrated books, yet you just felt the book’s cover. Now you’re doing it again. The oversized, orange bear suit is stiff and is hosting an animal who is pretending to be a bear. Meanwhile, a friendly looking turtle, who is the same height as the green creature inside the bear suit, is looking at the bear with a dubious look on his face.

Bearsuit Turtle Makes a Friend melds absurd humor, turtles and bear behavior for an instant illustrated classic.

Can’t. Handle. The. Cuteness. or. awesomeness. of. this. book.

Waiting for the Dawn, gorgeous art and presentation via a fire lens

I love contrasting colors. The visual train wreck of colors that exist in negative space. It’s the canvas that’s blacker than a thousand midnights, with only the occasional blinking of some of the thousands, out of the millions, of stars and planets that you’re able to see. Waiting for the Dawn is a book that’s built for kids who think like that, but have a more Earth-centric perspective. It’s a question or thought that every elementary age kid has, and that’s what happens to the animals who live in the forest when there’s a fire?

Waiting for the Dawn is a gorgeous illustrated book that uses (mainly) duo-chromatic colors to tell the story of a fire, the forest and its rebirth.

Fire, let me stand next to your fire

Hedgehogs Don’t Wear Underwear, comment charmant

Hedgehogs Don’t Wear Underwear runs with energy. It runs at the same pace as Kermit the Frog; frantically waving his arms as he’s introducing The Muppet Show. Soon he’ll become exasperated with Gonzo about some wacky scheme, probably involving a chicken, and you’re wondering why books can’t give you that same reaction. But it can, the reaction is held within the container that the show or book, resides in. It’s incredibly fun to watch, gives you a mile-wide grin just watching it, but is never in danger of bubbling over or becoming too much. Plus, Hedgehogs Don’t Wear Underwear features Jacques, a French-speaking hedgehog, sight gags, bright colors, talking animals, and a big secret.

Hedgehogs Don’t Wear Underwear is illustrated book gold. It’s visually fun, lyrically funny and runs with energy that few books have.

Sacre bleu, encore livres avec jacques!

The Sun and the Planets: A 3-D Solar-System with Pop-Ups!

There are known unknowns. I love that quote from Donald Rumsfeld. It made perfect sense to me because I’m wholly aware that there are numerous fields I know nothing about. My inner-home repair guru might enable me to give it a shot, but most of the time, unless it’s a paint job, I’ll grudgingly call in someone to do the job. The Sun and the Planets: A 3-D Solar System with Pop-Ups!, from the title, would seem to be a very basic children’s book. It’s a pop-up book. What could be higher-level learning about a pop-up book?

Pop-up to lock down outter-space 411

STEMville: The Fast Lane, easy to look at, with a big kid brain

My son’s high school marching band chose F1 as the musical theme for next school year. There will be some Formula 1 props that move around, lots of trumpets, drummers doing their thing and kids with oodles of musical talent. The only thing I know about Formula 1 is that I regret not going to Monaco Gran Prix when I lived outside of Monte Carlo. Wait, I also know that F1 is coming to theaters in 2025 and that the cars are shaped very differently than stock cars. STEMville: The Fast Lane is the latest in the STEMville book series. It manages to entertain ages seven and (way) up, without making it too babyish for the younger readers, while not insulting the older readers who are learning something new.

STEMville: The Fast Lane, a timeless look at F1, Formula One racing in a busy, anthropomorphic town. It makes you curious about it via sharp illustrations and perfectly truncated text.

Resistance is futile

Discovering Fun in The Secrets of Lovelace Academy

If the end result of a bait and switch is fun or beneficial, does it really matter? That depends on how strict you want to stick to your initial interpretation of the subject matter. Did you mis-judge it based on its cover or did it change its trajectory during the course of the story? I don’t even remember what I thought The Secrets of Lovelace Academy would be about. However, by the third chapter I didn’t care, and was fully engrossed in the story of a teenage orphan girl who was living in group home. If you’re like me; you need to read mglit about an orphanage at the turn of a century, as much as you need to spill coffee on the essays that you need to grade. That’s not bloody likely, is it?

Why books are read

All About Brains: Engaging Kids with Neurodiversity

It would be glib to talk about this book around Halloween and have a zombie doing the narrating. Granted that could certainly draw in more curious readers than the actual topic about All About Brains. It’s an illustrated book that looks at brains the way that early to upper-elementary can relate to, if they wanted to read a book about neurodivergence. Woah, easy there elementary school reader, do you mean that this is a fun book about the very broad field of neurodiverse kids? In a way, that is correct, All About Brains takes a macro look at some of the differences in that field. It starts with a young girl as she starts her day with medicine and her younger sibling asking to have some of her medicine that helps ease her ‘brain sparkles’.

All About Brains: A Book About People, an illustrated book that lives in the world of edutainment on pediatric neurodiversity. It’s more fun than the name sounds.

Educating AND entertaining