Daddy Mojo, Author at Daddy Mojo

Horizon of Khufu is VR the way that you imagine its potential will become

Just under 30 years ago I came to Atlanta for a business trip and the client wanted to impress us by taking us to a “VR experience”. It was VR, but it was the mid-90s version of it that has us tethered via a thick cord that constrained our movement as we navigated a series of lines that were akin to Pong or a very primitive first-person-shooter game. Horizon of Khufu: Journey in Ancient Egypt is not that version of VR. This is a wholly immersive VR experience that puts you into old town Khufu. You do still have to wear the glasses. However, as an entertainment experience for the price point, it’s challenging to put Horizon of Khufu in a league with anything else.

Horizon of Khufu is what you knew VR could be. It’s a story-driven, interactive journey that takes you to Giza and back.

Ignore how you look with the headset on and jump into the water

Westfallen is mglit that perfectly baits the hook and rewards readers

Westfallen is the mglit book that you didn’t know that you needed. In this case the ‘you’ that we’re referencing are upper-elementary, middle school or just those good-time readers who want to engage in a solidly paced, semi-plausible action novel that feels like something that makes you think ‘they don’t make em like that anymore’. Westfallen also flies in the face of recent mglit books that brazenly start their book series by putting a number on its spine. I’m all for optimistic thinking, but stating the goal that more books in the series will follow this one, before establishing their awesomeness is a practice that’s fallen far short lately.

Westfallen is the adventure of two trios of kids, separated by 80 years who are communicating via a radio they found in the waning days of WWII.

Start with the end in mind when creating a series

The Worst Wizard: Awkward Magic, a truth mirror for some reluctant readers

Elementary school students don’t know what a trope is. They might quickly lose interest in a story that’s played out or too familiar, but they can’t say that they weren’t interested in it due to the tired use of its trope. The Worst Wizard: Awkward Magic is reluctant reader food that flies in the face of the plot devices that are trying to drag it down. Wizards and those who don’t realize that they are yet can be an overplayed device in children’s literature. However, kids also want to read about wizards and the underdogs who might become them. You can see how the window of opportunity in capturing young readers in these books can be challenging.

Aye, ye be a reluctant reader mate?

Fire Escape: How Animals and Plants Survive Wildfires is for the curious

Children’s books can be for the curious, or the mandated. Unfortunately, elementary and middle school ages often engage in books because of the former. However, it’s those curious kids, the ones who have a basic interest in a subject and want to learn more about it, that are laying the seeds for future success at a higher level. That’s a challenging lesson to impart to younger readers for sure. Fire Escape: How Animals and Plants Survive Wildfires is a chapter book aimed at middle school readers who are smart enough to realize that fire does not always equal total devastation and that life finds a way.

Fire Escape: How Animals and Plants Survive Wildfires is middle-school, non-fiction whose engaging text keeps the facts coming for the curious.

Now dig this baby

Ready or Not, a teen-graphic novel that’s build just for them

Ready or Not is a graphic novel that isn’t quite what you think it will be. The cover shows a group of four upper-teenage friends on the roof discussing and looking like the typical teens who might have just graduated from high school. One of them is even wearing a beanie in early August, which is a fashion statement for the only 17-year-olds or those who can’t discern when their body temperature is uncomfortably hot and if only there were something simple that they could do like remove a wool cap. Now get off of my lawn. Ready or Not is an example of the graphic novel as a communication device for high school readers who need to see that people are just like them. Other teens, even ones that are shown in a graphic novel, but are in their same generation, will empathize with the characters and hopefully apply those lessons to themselves.

Ready or Not is a coming-of-age graphic novel geared at high school students that’s better than you think it is.

high school teen Breakfast Club Jam

Uncle Sam: Special Election Edition, a searing, timeless graphic novel

There’s something special about a book being out of print for a while. The classic animated Disney films used to go “in the vault” and then had a big hoop-de-do when they could be viewed again. Uncle Sam: Special Election Edition was out of print for over a decade. The only way to get your hands on it was to find the original two-issue comic book miniseries from 1997 or the graphic novel that followed its release. The 2024 presidential election is nigh and Uncle Sam: Special Election Edition is as pointed and aware as it was when it was originally released. It’s a beautiful, paranoid fever dream of a graphic novel that sears its way through the political spectrum leaving both sides wondering what went wrong with modern America.

Uncle Sam: Special Election Edition is a reissued, timeless, relevant graphic novel that’s just as powerful, now as it was in 1997.

Wow. A graphic novel that commands your attention.

Exoplanets, STEM that reaches wide from elementary to high

Exoplanets: A Guide to the Worlds Outside our Solar System is illustrated wonderment at the planets that reside in another neighborhood.

Somehow or another, Exoplanets: A Guide to the Worlds Outside our Solar System snuck past my review radar. Oh it landed in our office, but it gravitated towards our reference books and not in the ‘new’ books to review area. Exoplanets prematurely made its way into our ‘forever’ book stack, instead of the working book column that gets cycled through and written up. It certainly would’ve helped had we read Exoplanets when it was initially released because at that time we were planning our 2023 Dragon Con interviews. At that event we chatted with a handful of scientists researching conditions on various planets and the propulsion methods that astronauts would use to get there. Even though Exoplanets is an illustrated book, a medium that’s stereotypically thought of as a children’s book; it’s testament to the equally correct belief that just because the book is intended for children, it can reach far beyond its target audience.

Space, the frontier is calling you.

Welcome to Camp Snoopy is Peanuts lit for the Apple TV+ and more

We don’t have Apple TV+. It’s nothing personal against the streaming giant; it’s just that we can’t have every platform because that would nullify any savings that we earned from cord-cutting. However, if I were in early elementary school, and had control over the streaming options in our house, Apple TV+ would certainly be in the first two because of Camp Snoopy. Welcome to Camp Snoopy is a graphic novel compilation from Camp Snoopy, the aforementioned show. It’s a collection of short stories, lessons, and vignettes that the campers encounter during their stay at summer camp.

Welcome to Camp Snoopy is the print, graphic novel-esque compilation of some of the story lines from the Apple TV + show.

We’d buy snippets of Snoopy’s backpack lint