Showing posts with label Books. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Books. Show all posts

Tuesday, December 29, 2009

In the Meantime, Please Enjoy this Classic Post: Magic Eye

Repost Disclaimer: Children of the Nineties is at a work conference, and despite desperate pleas to the contrary is not entitled to personal computer time. In the meantime, please enjoy a pre-scheduled classic CotN repost from earlier this year. As I only had three or four readers at the time, it's probably (okay, almost definitely) new to you.


Magic Eye



It's a well-known fact that all children enjoy staring at a two dimensional image for so long that their eyes begin to glaze over and water uncontrollably. Their heads may ache, their eyes may lose focus, and their patience may wear paper thin, but nothing will impede them from their ultimate visual goal. Though usually it is near impossible to force a child to stay still, set one in front of a Magic Eye book or poster and prepare to be amazed: not by the Magic we were promised, but rather by the level of maddening concentration associated with capturing it.

There was nothing worse than being the one kid who couldn't see the hidden image. If you were ocularly challenged in a manner that hindered your useless ability to view a supposedly three dimensional image amongst a repetitive sea of two-dimensional images, you were relegated to endless ridicule and social alienation. God help you if you suffered from the curse of poor binocular disparity, as you were likely headed for a sad and lonely existence devoid of exciting jump-from-the-page imagery. A seemingly pointless skill of blank staring suddenly set apart the Haves from the Have Nots.

In bookstores and classrooms across the nation, the same conversation was taking place between increasingly frustrated pairs of children:

Kid #1: Look at the picture.
Kid #2: Okay, I'm looking. (long pause) So, what's supposed to happen here?
Kid #1: You'll see something.
Kid #2: I'll see what?
Kid #1: Just look at it!
Kid #2: I am looking.
Kid #1: No, look past it.
Kid #2: Oh, I think I kind of...
Kid #1: Do you see it now?
Kid #2: Um, yeah, I think so.
Kid #1: So what is it?
Kid #2: A...whale?
Kid #1: Ugh, it's the Statue of Liberty. Man, you suck at these things.

(Kid #2 walks off with pounding eye strain-based headache and wounded pride)

And...scene.

Nobody really seemed to know how these things worked, and no one really seemed to care. The real test of 90s childhood street credibility was an uncanny capacity to descramble austereogramatic images. I know, it makes perfect sense. How else are we supposed to prioritize our social structure? Brains? Looks? Give me a break. It was Magic Eye or nothing.


The burning shame of not being one of the Chosen Ones was both crippling and inescapable. Living with the constant fear that our mothers' old adages of our crossed eyes forever sticking that way was not enough to deter us from staring intently until our brains were set to burst. We were determined that this would be the time that we would finally see what everyone was raving about. Those who were skilled in the ways of the Magic Eye were constantly coaching us, insisting that we were doing it wrong. Despite our protests of poor depth perception or an inability to visually construct convergent images, the Seers were neverendingly giving us all sorts of well-meaning contradictory viewing tips:

"Cross your eyes a little!"
"Eyeballs further apart!"

"Look to the left of it!"
"The other left!"

"Try to focus on one spot!"
"Don't focus your eyes on anything at all!"
"Try to look past it!"

That last one was always my favorite. Oh, you want me to look past it? I was foolishly looking at it. Alrighty, no problem. I knew this x-ray vision would eventually come in handy. I'll just gaze straight through the paper to the next page and I'll be set.

Unfortunately, this brand sarcasm was lost on our persistent Magic Eye instructors. After all, who cares about attitude when you've got magical pictures? Hopeful that their Magic Eye proteges may have finally blossomed into fully evolved viewers capable of perceiving 3D imagery, the Seers would eagerly ask, "Can you see it now?" Horribly embarrassed by our ineptitude, we would have to grudgingly admit time and time again that we still lacked the basic ogling skills necessary to deconstruct a series of seemingly meaningless colored dots. Try as we might, we would never be content to simply accept it as a moderately attractive example of pointilistic art. We knew it was so much more, and we wanted in.

Thankfully, our dear uploading friends over at YouTube have put together an instructional video of sorts. Don't let the soothing music and whimsical font fool you. This thing is serious. I followed the instructions to a T, but somewhere along the way my plan to see a glorious hidden three-dimensional image took a turn for the worst. It brought me right back to 1995, with all my Seeing friends telling me, "You're thinking about it too much. Just stare at it. Don't think about it at all." Right. Because telling me not to think too much about it leads me to think about it prominently and intently. Why don't you give it a try and see what you see:



Isn't that nice? They offer that little consolatory image at the end to offset the continued wrenching humiliation of those of us unable to see the 3D picture. If you can see it, congratulations. Your ocular capacity clearly exceeds mine, and I respect your visual superiority. However, if you failed to see the image, you are not alone; in fact, many of our celebrated television personalities faced the same issue, sometimes as a minor offshoot plotline!

On the original Ellen show, Ellen Degeneres desperately tried to hide her secret inability to Magic Eye. An episode of Seinfeld left George and others so transfixed by the Magic Eye task at hand that they were unable to complete the rudimentary functions of their everyday lives. And of course, we can't forget out beloved Friend Ross Gellar, who was chastised by the whole group for his incompetence at drawing out the 3D Statue of Liberty in one of the most popular Magic Eye pictures. US magazine has been right all along, they really are just like us! And they say there are no relatable characters in sitcoms.

Thus if you're feeling down about your lack of Magical Eyes, rest your weary sockets. You're among good company. For those of you who can see the mythical images, well, continue to bask in your transcendent ability. A skill you thought had been laid to rest years ago has briefly returned just long enough for you to reassert your superiority over the Blind. By tomorrow your so-called skill will reclaim its rightful place in obsolescence and your gloating rights will dissolve like the two dimensional dots from the three dimensional Statue of Liberty.

Enjoy it while it lasts, you lucky bastards.

Wednesday, November 11, 2009

Frequently Banned Young Adult Books: 90s Edition

On an aside, this is my 200th post! That's a whole lot of 90s. PS don't forget to enter all and any personal or family Glamour Shots in the Glamour Shots Challenge! Send your undoubtedly embarrassing photos to childrenofthe90s@gmail.com.



Not only did I miss banned books week, this poster is from last year!


I know I'm about a month too late to engage in any sort of nationally conscious discussion during Banned Books week; my complete inattention to detail and timely pertinent bookstore displays is starting to show. It's an important issue at any time, though, and if it means we get to join in on mocking all those who seek to censor our allegedly inappropriate literary content, then all the better. If there's a bannedwagon out there, I'm jumping on it. Get it? Bannedwagon? Anyone?

*Cranes neck and shields eyes from monitor glare to gaze out at bewildered readers through their computer screens*

Painful puns aside, it's an issue many of us may not have been aware of as children but that continues to plague libraries and school systems everywhere. In any given society, there's bound to be a vocal contingency of uptight people engaging in the rectal transport of sticks. In a society that enourages free speech, however, the irony of their existence is no doubt lost on their closed minds. That is, the free speech stipulations that allow them to spout misguided uneducated drivel without consequence is the same ruling that upholds these authors' collective right to publish what they please. Quite a conundrum, huh?

Unsurprisingly, parents make up the majority of literary naysayers. It's natural for parents to be concerned about their innocent children's easily corruptible young minds, but the idea of each of us having our own parents is that families can make decisions for themselves and not society at large. Unfortunately, whoever yells the loudest often gains the widest audience, meaning these book banners garnered a lot of attention for their shouting and finger-pointing.

The most frequent reasons cited for protesting a book are sexuality, language, or "unsuitable material". In short, our intellectual freedom to grow and mature as eager young readers is most often suppressed by a bunch of prudes. Because why encourage a child to enjoy reading when you can teach them the value of complaining?

Here's a light sampling of the most frequently banned young adult books during the 90s. Many of the books were written decades earlier, but remained in the forefront of the censorship agenda:



The Giver


In this 1984-esque Utopian science fiction novel, Lois Lowry outlines a world of compliant individuals content to languish in their colorless world. The protagonist Jonas is stuck in a frightening sterile world where people are tightly controlled and exist without emotion. They even take pills to quell the sexual "stirrings" they feel beginning from puberty. You'd think our book banners would be all for that with all of their anti-sex rhetoric, but apparently what comes next is too inexcusable to give the book any merit in their eyes.

The Giver was banned largely for its themes of community-sanctioned suicide and euthanasia, the "release" characters receive if they fail to fit into the well-ordered society. Admittedly it's a pretty heavy issue for young children, but the book touts these behaviors as a negative consequence of an overly uniform society. In more common terms, they're saying it's bad. Don't do it. The book has a strong message of individuality and personal freedom, which we all know censors don't like one bit. It's no wonder they don't want us thinking for ourselves; they want us thinking for themselves.


Forever


Oh, and pretty much every other book written by Blume over the span of the preceding few decades made the list. Some authors really know how to cause a stir amongst conservative morally straitjacketed PTA types. Forever was a shoo-in for raising a ruckus with its explicitly sexual content, detailing the experiences of a high school girl and her boyfriend's foray into physical intimacy. Let's put it this way: the book was released in 1975 and remains in one of the top spots on the banned books chart. I'll give you a hint why it remains so popular among young readers: it's about sex.

On an aside, some statisticians speculate that the dip in popularity of the name Ralph is in direct correlation to the fact that that's what the protagonist's boyfriend names his, er, private parts. Now that's a lasting impact.

Go Ask Alice


This story has a seriously awesome punchline. After years of speculation over the identity of the anonymous author of this drug-addled teenage memoir, it was revealed that it was actually penned by a Mormon youth minister. One of the censor-mongers' own! Ba-Dum-Ching!

Okay, so that didn't really kick the censorship habit. If anything, it just added fuel to the fire. As an anonymous diary, the book was provocative in its depictions of sexuality and extensive drug use. As a book written by a Mormon youth minister, it lost a little of that street credibility. Just a tad. Author Beatrice Sparks allegedly based the novel on the diary of one of her real psychiatry patients, but still. Regardless of the fact that the book is a cautionary tale against drug use, some parents obviously their kids will be drawn to try drugs after reading descriptions of the main character trying to bite her fingers off on a bad trip. Right.




Goosebumps



Not all banned books were contested on sexuality. Some were just plain unsavory. At least that's what parents claimed of the wildly popular Goosebumps series. The books had kids delighting in reading, but apparently at the cost of exposure to some cartoon-grade violence. The horror!




Alice Series



A book about teenagers with sex on the brain? Why, I've never heard of such a thing! On her own blog just a few weeks ago, Reynolds Naylor addressed the issue of parents protesting the content of her book:

It’s usually parents who want their children kept “pure,” as many parents tell me, “from harmful influences.” The mother of a ten year old girl was very angry with me for talking about how babies are conceived in Lovingly Alice. She wrote that since her daughter read that book, “the words penis and vagina will be forever ingrained on her mind.” Another mother tearfully accosted me because she found the word “condoms” in a novel for teenagers, and said, “My eighth grade son doesn’t know what condoms are and I don’t want him to know.” Whenever I hear comments like these, my heart really goes out to their children.

Well put, Phyll. Parents are entitled to raise their children however they see fit, and they certainly don't need to check this one out of the library for their kids if it's in contention with their moral values. It's general right to exist, however, is a whole different story. (That story is called Achingly Alice, available at bookstores near you!)



The Boy Who Lost His Face



The Boy Who Lost His Face was written by Louis Sachar, the author behind the Wayside School books. The protests against insinuations of witchcraft I may support, but I can understand them. My favorite challenge, however, was the inclusion of "obscene gestures". Yes, you read that right. The reader doesn't actually see any obscene gestures, he or she just reads a description of them.




Harry Potter


This one is probably sort of a given. Sorcery, witchcraft, magic: all that good stuff is more than enough ammunition to set off religious protest groups. Despite the fact that the novels fell into the fantasy genre, many censors fear that that faithful children will abandon their Biblical aspirations in favor of a career in the dark arts.

Many parents also feared the books were a bit too dark and scary for young children, which is a reasonably legitimate concern. I'd advise for those parents to not let their six year olds read it. On the other side of the banning spectrum, some critics contended Harry and his pals set a bad example for their kids. He gets into all sorts of mischief and doesn't always obey his elders. You know, he has fun and he's a kid. Quick, hide the book!



Scary Stories


They're too scary. We get it. Let's move on.



The Face on the Milk Carton



The "sexual content" charge, though minimal, I can kind of understand, but the "challenging of authority" allegation? I mean, the book is about a girl who's been kidnapped by her own grandparents. Whose authority exactly is in question? Is it just the general notion that adults can make mistakes, commit crimes, or otherwise act unwisely? It's a bit of a stretch, to say the least.



Everyone has the right to their own opinion, and my disparaging remarks about the tightly wound moral crusaders is just another blissful exercise in free speech. Let me freely say that most of these challenges are the most ridiculous, asinine ideas ever to spew from the mouths of overzealous overprotective over-meddling parents. You, of course, have the freedom to disagree with me. That's the beauty of it. Embrace it. Freely.

Friday, October 16, 2009

90s TV Shows Based on Young Children's Book Series



There are only so many ideas in circulation at one time, so sometimes we've got to work with recyclable materials. Luckily for children's television programming producers, there was a wealth of ideas available in the juvenile literary world. Armed with familiar and much-beloved characters, these shows were near-guaranteed successes as children were eager to see their favorite storybook stars yukking it up on the small screen. Here are just a few of our once book-bound friends who made the leap from two-dimensional picture to, well, okay, two-dimensional picture. But, you know, with sound and animation.


Arthur



Who better than an anthropomorphic talking preteen aardvark to teach children life lessons? I really can't think of any superior alternative. Well, unless maybe you also threw in some monkey and rabbit pals. That would be the cherry on top of the talking animal role model cake.

Marc Brown began writing Arthur books in 1976, publishing the bulk of his cutesy aardvark-centric stories throughout the 80s and 90s. Brown was especially adept at slipping in a convenient pro-literacy and library friendly agenda, skyrocketing the books to popularity in schools and public reading settings. There's nothing a library loves quite as much as a book that loves libraries. It's just really the most perfect fit. I mean, for God's sake, the main character's last name is Read. How unsubtle can it get?

While the books had been enjoying a wave of popularity for a couple of decades, 90s kids were treated to an extra special supplementary means of Arthur enjoyment. In 1996, the Arthur TV series premiered on PBS, the Mecca of educational children's television entertainment supported by Viewers Like You. PBS did not disappoint in their interpretation of the new book classics, providing a series that was enjoyed by children and adults alike. Even those kids who veered into the gray area of a little too old for kid's shows often watched the show in secret, delighting in the clever wit and catchy reggae theme song performed by Ziggy Marley.

The books were delightful to children throughout the 80s and 90s not because of their exciting, fantastical nature, but because Arthur was just a regular third grade boy--er, aardvark--who suffered the same daily humiliations, irritations, and apprehensions as the rest of us. His sister DW was a total pain in the ass, he has a baby sister and a playful puppy, and deals with the daily dilemmas common to third grade Suburban life. Not to mention the show pulled guest voice actors like the Backstreet Boys, Joan Rivers, and Alex Trebek. Not bad for a show aimed at 8-year olds.



The Magic School Bus



What kid doesn't love a happy trip to imaginationland? A vehicle to get there is always useful, so when author Joanna Cole offered us a magical schoolbus, we were all more than willing to jump on board for some good ol' fashioned imaginary field trips. Plus the TV series was Canadian. How much more inviting and welcoming can you get?

As was the standard for 90s educational television program, the cast was composed of one-off token members representing a virtual rainbow of animated diversity. We had the Jewish kid, the Black kids, the Irish kid, the Mexican one, the Chinese one...pretty much if you can name an ethnicity, one of its well-spoken young representatives had a reserved seat of the Magic Schoolbus. The group was led by the eccentric frizzy-coiffed Ms. Frizzle, voiced by Lily Tomlin. We followed our bus-bound friends as they entered the human body, blast into space, or through the water cycle. Oh, and did I mention Danny Tamberelli voiced the Jewish kid and the Mexican kid was Jason from Mean Girls? I'm not really what else you could ask for from a kids' show. Oh, except maybe a theme song performed by Little Richard. I know I'm sold.



The Busy World of Richard Scarry



There's nothing quite like a warm fuzzy value-laden story starring anthropomorphic animals to convince parents to let the TV babysit their kids for a half hour or so. I'm pretty sure if I were a parent on the fence about letting children's TV programming play nanny, seeing that little worm driving an apple car would undoubtedly push me over the edge. It was fast-paced enough to keep children entertained, featuring three mini-episodes in each show. Since kids are not exactly known for their ability to sit still and patiently enjoy audiovisual media, there was more than enough material to satiate them.

The stories focused mainly on the Cat family, made up of Huckle, Sally, Mother, and Father. For no good reason, they cohabited with Lowly Worm. You know, because everyone knows that cats and worms are natural compadres. We also had police officer Sargent Murphy, the chronically unemployed and banana-desperate Bananas Gorilla, and the dumpster-diving friendly trashman Mr. Fixit. It was an eclectic bunch, but they were admittedly chock-full of talking animal wisdom and values. If nothing else, it sure beats what passes for children's programming these days. Send one of those Yo Gabba Gabba critters up against Lowly Worm and his applemobile and I'd put my bets on wormy.




Little Bear



Speaking of tedious sanctimonious children's programming. He's cute and all, but he just has so many feelings. The books were pretty sweet, though no one would declare them overly creative. With animal characters aptly named Duck, Owl, Hen, Cat, Mother Bear, Father Bear, and Little Bear, they weren't exactly breaking new ground here. For no reason at all, there was also a little girl named Emily and a skunk named Marshmallow. Just go with it.

Like The Busy World of Richard Scary, each Little Bear episode featured three vignettes. Our titular character is a curious shoeless six-year old little boy bear who provides the childlike perspective. The show has a sort of old-fashioned feel, though it premiered in the 90s. Our characters hand-knead bread by candlelight, so perhaps they're not the most relatable characters for kids. Then again, they're also bears, so we can probably just let that go.




The World of David the Gnome



Based on the children's book The Secret Book of Gnomes, Daivd the Gnome is a Spanish television series later dubbed in English and narrated by our pal Captain von Trapp. You know, from the Sound of Music? Anyway, the show introduced us to the curious world of gnomes, a miniature community of half-foot tall pointed-hat sporting little people who lived in forests, farms, or gardens. These little guys were hundreds of years old and full of a fun type of gnome-specific wisdom that only children can appreciate. Because looking back, I think I'm just too jaded to appreciate this kind of stuff anymore. Back in the day, though, with my thriving imagination, I was all over this stuff.

Our buddy David the Gnome (Tom Bosley!) is a forest-dwelling gnome in the medicinal healing mold, doling out acupuncture and hypnosis to his gnome neighbors. He's got a wife named Lisa, his best friend is a fox, and his family is forever being pestered by local trolls. At the time, it made perfect sense, believe me. The show had environmental undertones, with the gnomes charged with picking up after us selfish and uncaring humans. Damn humans. We're so cruel and we have no sense of appreciation for primary colored pointed hats.



The ideas may not have been original, but most of the stories translated pretty well to television. The shows also had the effect of easing our parents' guilt of parking us in front of the TV with the hope that it might inspire us to someday pick up the book itself. So what if all we came out with was an encyclopedic knowledge of children's TV theme songs? The point is that they tried.

Monday, September 14, 2009

Popular Young Adult Books Series of the 90s

Image via fantasticfiction.co.uk

What's that old saying? Why write one good book when you can milk a hundred mediocre attempts on the same premise? Something like that. So maybe it doesn't have such resonating wisdom to it, but hey, I don't have a whole team of ghostwriter underlings to do my bidding and come up with something a bit more inspired like the evil geniuses behind franchises like Sweet Valley High.

Admittedly many of our favorite series did indeed come from a single author source, though some of them pulled it off more cunningly than others. I like farfetched plot twists as much as the next person, but things sometimes had a tendency to get out of hands when authors were given the gift of infinite access to the same characters in an unlimited combination of variable situations.

Though the topics and literary value of these series varied significantly from one to the other, they were all legitimate enterprises. Publishers love series for their reliability rather than their quality, and they can certainly get away with a great deal more when dealing with younger and less discerning readers. While some of these series were well-written and twisty plot-filled, others were embarrassingly more juvenile than their intended target audience. Wherever they happen to fall on the quality spectrum, one thing was for sure: book-hungry kids ate this stuff up. Without further ado, a smattering of our most beloved and sometimes inexplicably bestselling young adult series:


Goosebumps



Children's horror series were a lucrative niche genre in the 90s. If you were so imaginatively inclined to be able to think up ridiculous tongue-in-cheek plots that wouldn't stand a chance at being made into a C movie, then you were pretty much golden. Kids went crazy for this stuff. It was sort of scary in an innocent, comical way that kept us coming back for more. Sometimes the concepts were a tad frightening, but the plots were so absurd and twist-filled that it tended to give us more head bumps than goosebumps. From all the facepalming, that is. I do distinctly remember finding the mask and that camp jellyblob thing to be a bit on the nightmare-inducing side, but then again Men in Black gave me nightmares as a kid so maybe you shouldn't take my word for it.

They also had a fair run in television form, featuring this jazzy intro with creepy glowing-eye dog:



Babysitters' Club




Tween girls were a highly desirable reader demographic in the 90s, particularly as it seemed we were pretty much willing to read anything and everything. I had a rather undying love for the girls of the babysitters' club, remaining fiercely loyal to them even in the face of their complete and total stereotypical ridiculousness. These girls were not exactly three dimensional. They essentially taught me that I could be one of a few character molds: the brassy tomboy, the diabetic fashion model, the California hippie, the shy one, the defiant artistic anti-intellectual Asian one, the nerd, or the black ballerina. I was pretty sure these were my only viable life choice paths once I hit middle school.

The BSC was franchising at its finest, featuring all sorts of additional merchandise, a feature film, and a television series with a theme song that my college friends may or may not have included on a road trip mix. I'll give you a hint: they did.


I owned all of these individual episodes on VHS ordered through the magic of Scholastic book orders. I'll give you a moment to calm your jealousy.




Animorphs




Under closer inspection, it seems that 80s and 90s teen series fell into one of two categories: bitchy preteen girls with growing-up type problems or over-the-top science fiction/horror. That is to say, either incredibly girly or with gory details to appeal to a male demographic. Animorphs fell more into the latter category with its characterization of a group of preteens who had the ability to change into animals in their efforts to quash a secret alien rebel force. Yep, these disgusting outer-space slugs would shimmy into your ear canal and turn you into an alien zombie, but luckily we've got a couple of kids on our side who can morph into housecats.

Animorphs was also granted a short run as a Nickelodeon series:




Fear Street



What happens to kids when they graduate from Goosebumps? They move on to Fear Street, of course. Goosebumps author RL Stine aged his characters a couple of years, threw in some particularly gory scenes, and made brutal murder an inevitable and unavoidable aspect of any plot. Sounds fun, right? The series is loosely tied together in the same way Goosebumps books were, rarely featuring the same characters but rehashing the same themes book after book. It's tough to say whether these would hold tight with today's kids--if anything, they'd have to suffice as the poor man's Twilight. I'm not too ashamed to admit I had RL Stine sign my well-thumbed copy of Fear Street: The New Girl at a Mall of America booksigning. I did, however, soon thereafter realize I have no patience for mysteries. Sorry, RL.



Sweet Valley High





These were pretty much my bible growing up, so you can only imagine how shocked I was to find out as an adult just how god-awful they really are. I mean honestly. Jessica and Elizabeth Wakefield were nothing short of my idols as a kid, and now I hear that they're actually insufferable? Who was I to know? I was so entranced and drawn in by the ghostwriters' incredibly repetitive rehashing of their blonde hair, blue-green eyes, California good looks, and perfect size-six figures that I was blinded to the ridiculousness that was their overblown stereotypes of personalities. Jessica (also known as the cool one) was essentially the worst person in the world and Elizabeth (the smart one) made Pollyanna look like Al Capone. And I also learned a valuable lesson: you can tell popular people from nerdy brainiacs by the way they wear their hair. A ponytail is a dead giveaway for being the nerdy twin.

Though these books veered into some pretty outlandish directions (vampires, werewolves, viscount boyfriends), they did manage to keep it toned down for the brief run of the TV-series, which focused mainly on their regular Sweet Valley lives.


I always thought the twins who played the girls on TV were way too slutty-looking to be Jess and Liz. Either way, I totally owned a Sweet Valley High board game and had full collections of Sweet Valley Kids, Sweet Valley Twins, Sweet Valley High, and Sweet Valley University. I imagine that my family singlehandedly supported Francise Pascal's enterprise.



Harry Potter


I will no doubt have to better explore Harry Potter in its own full post as it's a legitimate phenomenon in a way few of these others are. I'm also willing to give credit where credit is due and concede the books are far better written and well-conceived than any of the others on this list. In short, Harry Potter made being nerdy cool in its own way. The content was undeniably fantastical and imaginative in a manner compatible with extreme geekiness, yet everyone seemed enthralled by them. Perhaps in the way media like Star Wars gave geeks an outlet of kind of cool make-believe people to admire, Harry Potter managed to simulataneously win readers with nerds and well, everyone else. You'd be pretty hard-pressed to find someone who hasn't at least read one of these books.

Harry Potter is the ultimate money-making franchise, far outliving its rival book series peers. The big-budget fantasy adventure film adaptations don't fare too poorly, either:





Help! I'm Trapped...




Did you know that you can write 16, count 'em, 16 books that have titles beginning with "Help! I'm Trapped in (insert entrapment device or body here)"? Because you totally can. Todd Strasser made a healthy living off of doing just that, trapping our pals in everything from their teachers' bodies to the first day of doggie obedience school. Actually, we got to go to obedience school twice, so I'm somewhat suspicious that he just ran out of ideas.


By the by, it wouldn't hurt to check out some of these young adult book blogs if the YA series dosage in this post didn't quell your 90s YA book withdrawal. Enjoy!

Dibbly Fresh
Shannon's Sweet Valley Blog
Are You There Youth? It's Me, Nikki

Friday, August 7, 2009

Reading Rainbow


Were you aware that reading allows you fly approximately two times as high as a butterfly in the sky? And that reading enables you to simultaneously be both anywhere and anything? Powerful stuff. Thankfully, as an avid watcher of Reading Rainbow, I was keyed in on this kind of insider literate knowledge. That mesmerizingly soothing theme song drew me in time after time:

Butterfly in the sky, I can go twice as high
Take a look, it's in a book - Reading Rainbow.

I can go anywhere!
Friends to know and ways to grow - Reading Rainbow.

I can be anything!
Take a look, it's in a book - Reading Rainbow.

Reading Rainbow, Reading Rainbow, Reading Rainbow, Reading Rainbow!




Hosted by LeVar Burton, Reading Rainbow was an educational children's television series created in the 80s to encourage elementary-age children to read. While initially a summer exploit, its popularity soon propelled it into a year-round venture. Reading Rainbow was a touchy-feely approach to children's book-learning, combating the evils of distracting adversarial forces of literature.

Like TV.

What's that you ask? Wasn't Reading Rainbow on TV? So what you're telling me is that kids were encouraged to watch TV as a measure to get them away from mindless television entertainment and into a cozy literate environment?

Yep. That's exactly what I'm telling you. Glad to see we're on the same page. Or in this case, channel.

Sure, it seems vaguely counter-intuitive, but Reading Rainbow was probably a welcome shift from the mind-numbing children's television entertainment that predominated the airwaves in the 80s and 90s. I suppose if parents were forced to choose a TV program to babysit their children, they may as well go with the lesser of two evils. At least the kid might get to see Billy Cosby reading an Arthur book in one of his trademark sweaters.


Everyone knows the best way to prove your love of reading children's books is to submerge yourself in them completely


Yes, Reading Rainbow featured a vast spectrum (insert groan here) of celebrity guest readers. Not just public television celebrities like Snuffleupagus or Lambchop, but real living, breathing celebrities that parents had actually heard of. People like Julia Child, James Earl Jones, Maya Angelou, Gilda Radner, and Richard Gere showed up to narrate a children's book, all in the name of child literacy. Admirable, no?

The show was more than just on-screen reading, though. Each episode generally reflected a single theme, featuring multiple books, children's reviews, and segments on issues like diversity, new experiences, self esteem, and most importantly, The Library. Reading Rainbow loved The Library. Like got-down-on-one-knee-and-proposed-to-pledge-eternal-love love. Every two minutes, we'd get another cheery plug for visiting our local library. God forbid any of us readers support the featured authors themselves by heading out to purchase the books.

Okay, okay, I admit I'm being a bit facetious. I love the library. It was one of my most favorite hangouts at a child. Actually, as a kid there's no way I would have noticed any TV show plugging anything. My favorite Saturday morning cartoons could have been surreptitiously selling me crack cocaine and I wouldn't have even an inkling that the show had been sponsored by the crack industry. I suppose there are worse things than a couple of relatively subtle nudges to go visit my local library. I retract my previous barb.


Reading Rainbow was more than adept at achieving its ultimate goal of encouraging children to read. It's format was simple, but it got results. Parents were pleased to see their kids getting excited about reading. Kids were pleased to see their parents excited about letting them watch TV. Everyone was a winner.

If your parents were either nerds or suckers for historical miniseries, they no doubt trusted deeply in the educational guidance of LeVar Burton. Known for his roles in both Star Trek: The Next Generation and Roots, Burton was a pretty credible source. That's not even counting his contributions to the planet as Kwame on Captain Planet. Oh, LeVar. Is there anything you can't teach?

If your parents did happen to be Trekkies, they were able to geek out with LeVar every now and then. In the segment below, he gives a behind the scenes look at the making of Star Trek: The Next Generation. Prepare to be beamed out of your minds:



Personally though, my favorite segment was usually the kids' very own book reviews, I am proud to present a short segment of a review, posted on YouTube by the star herself who no doubt now deeply regrets her choice in lenswear. But you don't have to take my word for it*:



Well, that's all we have for you today, kids. In the ever-wise words of Mr. Burton himself, I'll see you next time.**




*In the case that you were unaware, this was Mr. Burton's opening catchphrase prior to the children's reviews
**This was the closing catchphrase. I know, I know. My use of it in my own closing was pretty deep and symbolic. You don't have to tell me. Now it's off to enjoy my weekend after all of that deep-thinking about metaphorical reinterpretations. Oh yeah, and see you next time.

Friday, July 31, 2009

I SPY Books



It's a parents dream: for the low low price of $9.95, you can guarantee your attention span-less child will stay put in a single spot for an uncharacteristically extended period of time. Heck, parents would probably pay upwards of $100 for results like these, so those Scholastic people are really cutting them a deal on this one. Writer Jean Marzollo and photographer Walter Wick are probably laughing all the way to their interestingly cluttered homes full of cleverly arranged tough-to-spot ornamental and thematic objects.

Following in the well-hidden footsteps of Where's Waldo, Scholastic's series of I SPY books offered a handily portable search game certain to provide children with endless hours of contemplation and entertainment. Each page was its own magical little world of plentiful well-placed objects, usually within some sort of thematic framework. The pages themselves were visually impressive enough to enthrall children of any age, while the clever written riddlers were at times enough to stump any parents reading along.



These books were full of imagination and wonder, which generally translated into them being simultaneously mesmerizing and frustrating. Sure, the pictures were hypnotizing in their high level of visual interest, but they also gave our poor little eyes stare-at-an-eclipse level strain. It's a wonder we weren't all marveling over these books stooped over with Quasimodo-esque posture donning granny glasses dangling from a chain. If anything had the power to age us prematurely, it was these damn visual puzzlers.

We all started off pretty cocky. They'd throw a few easy search assignments at you to build your confidence in typical 90s rah-rah self-esteem style. Some of the clues were completely straightforward, as least in theory. In practice, we were required to actually locate these objects amidst a sea of unimportant junk. Just when we thought we'd finally conquered these perplexing puzzles, we'd get to one that had some sort of riddle. Oh, great, so now we have to think, too? What is this, The Eleventh Hour? And no secret solution in the back? For shame.

The pictures themselves were an impressive feat alone. Where exactly were they getting all of this stuff? I've been to plenty of garage sales and swap meets, but I've never managed to accumulate this volume of junk. How could they possibly track down so many button, marbles, manacala beads, and checkers to artfully arrange in a chaotically ordered manner?

And what sort of mixed messages were these sending children? Our parents say "Clean your room," and then offer us a book full of vast quantities of object in complete disarray? I tried writing a poem to go with my messy room, but my parents weren't taken in by my I SPY-like effort. If only they'd solved that riddle, I'd perhaps have had the confidence to pursue my then-chosen career as a search picture book stanza composer. Plus, they could have found my stuffed manatee.


Despite these personal setbacks, I can still admire these books' intricacies. While most parents tired of reading the same books to their children over and over, the I SPY series provided both parents and their offspring with hundreds of new items to discover with each read. You even have the opportunity at some healthy competition in your race to locate all the listed objects. Just be prepared for the inevitable resultant tears when your overly competitive father shouts, "In your face!" repeatedly to celebrate his obviously unfair victory. Don't say I didn't warn you.

Parents also had the advantage of softening the blow of defeat on their younger, more fragile children (read: the illiterate. Well, they can't. But you get the point.) Many of them quickly realized that especially in a family where multiple ages of children played with this book, you could, ahem, adapt it for younger non-reading kids. In other words: lie. Lie, lie, lie. "Oh, what does all that writing say? It says, look for the big happy clown in the middle of the page! What's that? Found it already! What a smart little boy!"

Try as I might, I was never able to recreate this scene with my own Tinker Toys. Perhaps it's because I didn't have a proper protractor and rainbow xylophone on hand.

In Scholastic's infinite wisdom (evidenced by their glorious, glorious book orders), they fashioned these books to be lightweight and highly portable. Translation: bring it in the car and maybe your children will shut the hell up on a long road trip. Without this type of legitimate distraction, who knows what dire lengths you'd have to go to to satiate your restless and irritable children. In my family, we were reduced to stopping off at a cemetery so us kids could run around. Unfortunately for my parents, from then on whenever my sister and I spotted a cemetery from the car, we would eagerly implore, "Play, play!" Honestly, we wouldv'e been much better off with an I SPY book. After all, it's far more difficult to disrespect the dead with one of those babies.

So for those of you with children who prefer not to engage in any type of sacrilege sure to anger someone upstairs, I'd highly recommend investing in one of these. And for those of you without children, my advice stands. Alright, so you may get some questionable looks when you whip out I SPY: Spooky Night on your subway trip home from your hours of enslavement to the man, but just imagine how excited you'll be when you finally locate that cross-eyed jack-o-latern.

Suggested public transit reading to ward off unwanted conversation. I'm warning you though, finding that jack-o-latern is a real bitch.

Thursday, July 2, 2009

Sideways Stories from Wayside School Books


Children have a certain knack for appreciating the bizarre and unusual. While adults are quick to question and doubt, children have always embraced the silliness with open arms. That's probably why looking back fondly at the oddball books and cartoons that used to entertain us often reveals them to be totally and completely insane.

The Wayside School series by Louis Sachar is a prime example of this type of endearing strangeness. While our adult selves may wonder what sort of drugs he was taking and where we can get some, our inner (well, at the time, outer) children lapped up his unending creativity and originality. To kids, things don't need to make sense. Not everything requires a logical explanation. Things can be zany, wacky, madcap, and other corny adjectives as well.

Wayside School was certainly a place all its own. Built sideways, the school mistakenly ended up with 30 floors with one classroom each rather than one floor with 30 classrooms. There is, however, no 19th story. In Sideways Stories from Wayside School, Chapter 19 reads: "19. Miss Zarves---There is no Miss Zarves. There is no nineteenth story. Sorry."


In the introduction to Sideways Stories from Wayside School, Sachar helpfully offers:

"It has been said that these stories are strange and s
illy. That is probably true. However, when I told stories about you to the children at Wayside, they thought you were strange and silly. That is probably also true."

As a child, I was fully sold after reading that introduction. In my book (yet to be published, nowhere near the towering fame of Wayside School), Louis Sachar was a brilliant author. He truly tapped in to the way kids think, and threw it back at any adults that may be reading along with tongue-in-cheek humor that could be enjoyed by readers of all ages. The overall message was, yes, these stories are completely absurd, but we're all strange in our own ways. Silliness should be celebrated, not repressed. After all, that's what makes kids kids. Otherwise they'd be adults, who we all know to be terribly dull and boring.




The first installment of the Wayside School books was published in 1978, meaning an expansive 11 years passed between release of the first and second books*. For condensation (in time, not moisture) and relevance's sake, let's delve into the 1989 title Wayside School is Falling Down. As the book is made of 30 loosely interconnected chapter, I have chosen a few to share with you today. I've even thrown in a handy "moral of the story" to enhance the story's applicability to you today:


Chapter 1: A Package for Mrs. Jewls

Thank heaven for kindly, sweet-faced Mrs. Jewls who replaced the tyrannical Mrs. Gorf in the original Sideways Stories. Mrs. Gorf had a penchant for zapping children into apples, so pretty much anyone below the meanness threshold of fascist dictator would have been welcomed graciously. Sure, Mrs. Jewls thought they were all monkeys for awhile, but overall she meant pretty well. For an inane fictional character, that is.

In "A Package for Mrs. Jewls", Louis the yard teacher claims to be Mrs. Jewls and accepts a package on her behalf. It should probably be noted that that Sachar neatly inserted himself into the stories, basing the Louis character on his own experiences as a playground teacher. Anyway, so this amalgam of the real and fictional Louises takes special care with the package as it is marked with numerous warnings of fragility. After lugging the enormous box up thirty flights of stairs, Louis breathlessly opens the box to reveal a shiny new computer.

The kids whine and resist, saying that the computer will speed up their learning and make more work for them. Mrs. Jewls objects, saying the computer will help them learn. She proceeds to push the computer out the window. After it smashes violently to the ground, she announces "That's Gravity!"

Moral of the story: If you're having a rough day at work, perhaps your office-mates would enjoy a good lesson in gravity. After you've read your daily installment of Children of the 90s, of course.


The real Louis (author Louise Sachar), who we can only assume has never carried a computer up 30 flights of stairs. Image via randomhouse.com


2. Mark Miller

Benjamin Nushmutt is a new student joining the wacky thirtieth floor class. Without provocation or just cause, Mrs. Jewls incorrectly introduces Benjamin as Mark Miller. Too timid to correct a teacher, Benjamin/Mark lets it slide. Unfortunately, by the time Benjamin musters the courage he is afraid she'll think him strange for not pointing out the mistake sooner. Benjamin adjusts to being called Mark and assumes the Mark Miller persona. Later in the book his efforts to come clean about his real name are acutely thwarted, though we do eventually meet the real Mark Miller.

Moral of the story: When you tire of your current personality, feel free to try another on for size. Particularly if you have a last name with the non-musical garblings of Nushmutt.



3. A Bad Case of the Sillies/A Wonderful Teacher

In these two stories, Allison (the only seemingly normal child at Wayside) mysteriously finds herself on the nonexistent nineteenth floor, home of Mrs. Zarves' classroom. Mrs. Zarves even-crazier students consist of Virginia (a 30-something who has never heard of a bathroom), teenage Nick, Ray Gunn (Bebe's made-up little brother), a cow, and the real Mark Miller. Unluckily for Mark Miller, everyone inexplicably keeps calling him Benjamin Nushmutt.


Moral of the story: If Seinfeld can have Bizarro Jerry, Benjamin Nushmutt can certainly have his Mark Miller. You may now freely assume that you too have a perfect opposite/evil twin somewhere out there.


4. Mush

Miss Mush is Wayside's school cook, whose most popular dish ("nothing") is in such high demand that she is always running out of it. She prepares her signature Mushroom Surprise, though no one knows exactly what the surprise is. The only person who ever eats Mushroom Surprise is Louis. Ron mans up and takes a bite, only to find that the surprise is that you immediately fall in love with the first person you see. Surprise! It's his teacher.

Moral of the story: If you ever are dining out and happen to run into JTT or Britney Spear circa 1999, feel free to dish out the Mushroom Surprise. You won't regret it. Unless, of course, it turns out to be Britney circa 2008. Then you're pretty SOL.



Who says reading for enjoyment can't be educational? The next time you hear someone make a statement like that, simply take a page from the Wayside books and call them a mugworm griblick. That'll show 'em.


*The series also includes the equally humorous 1995
Wayside School Gets a Little Stranger, which is totally worthy of a full-scale examination that I don't have the time or space to provide.


*Oh, and they recently made a Wayside TV series that I'm sure if I watched, my imagination would automatically shrivel, die, and retreat. Hence it will not be covered in this post


Ooh! Read some Wayside Stories online with Google Books!


Sideways Stories

Wayside School is Falling Down

Wayside School Gets a Little Stranger

Wednesday, June 17, 2009

Chicken Soup for the Soul


Regardless of how soul-savingly wonderful or retina-burstingly abhorrent you find the Chicken Soup for the Soul book series to be, we can all agree on one thing: Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen were probably laughing all the way to the bank in the face of the 140 publishers who initially refused the manuscript. 16 years and 100+ books later, people are eager as ever to lap up every last drop of sentimentality with a spoon. These feel-good heart-tugging tales were meant to induce feelings and inspire, though for some the only feelings inspired was an unrelenting nausea.

The 90s had a surprisingly high market quotient for touchy-feeliness, considering all the angsty cynicism (a la Nirvana) and vapid materialism (a la Clueless) people attribute to 90s culture. Perhaps there was some mysterious point of contact which allowed the angsty to express their wealth of feelings and the superficial to pat themselves on the back for their insincere sentimentalism. Whatever the reason, there was a pretty serious market for all things high-faloutin' and pseudo-spiritual.

This impulse for inspiration manifested itself in several forms: Touched by an Angel, the rise of televangelism, Lurlene McDaniel young adult novels. Perhaps the most lucrative exploitative franchise capitalizing on this trend was The Chicken Soup for the Soul series. The series' name implies that we are somehow naturally sick, and the only soothing remedy is to buy this book. That's a sound marketing strategy if I ever heard one (Get it? Sound? Heard? Okay, think I'm alone on this one). I'm going to come out with a new line of books next year entitled, "Buy this book or you will inevitably get an incurable mutation of swine flu ." It seems pretty straightforward, and I bet I could make a bundle on it.

Sarcasm aside (briefly), the books arguably had some inherent merit beneath their drecky facade. The stories were indeed positive and uplifting and made good on the title's promise of a soothing read. However, it was less about the value of the stories themselves than the ensuing warm fuzzy feeling many of us got from reading this book. See, the book had that sort of incredibly-easy-read-to-make-you-feel-good-about-yourself quality to it. By feeling touched by the stories, we could all personally feel as if we were good, moral, spiritual people who were eager to be inspired and called to action in a quest for positivity. Despite the passivity of our actions (sitting and reading an overrated bestseller) we could all breathe a sigh of relief that we were indeed, as we had always suspected, good people.


The Chicken Soup for the Soul Condolence Sympathy Basket from www.recover-from-grief.com. Yes, this exists.

Before you go on the offensive and defend these books (or would that be the defensive?), let me be the first to admit that I ate these up as a kid. I absolutely could not get enough. For some reason, I was unwaveringly certain that these books possessed the tidbits of timeless wisdom that were the secrets to unlocking a life of happiness. When I turned 12, someone gave me a copy of Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul as a gift. I remember earmarking chapters I thought to be particularly poignant, such as "Things Girls Love about Boys" and stories about kids with (insert life obstacle here) overcoming adversity.

After devouring volume after volume, I had that wonderful unearned feeling of being a better person without ever having to leave my room. Why, in the span of two hours, I had been empathetic, altruistic, sympathetic, and accepting. The tears in my eyes were evidence that I was indeed a living, feeling person who cared about others deeply. Right?


Maybe. One of the strongest selling points of these books was that inspiration is an incredibly vague term. I doubt most readers immediately mobilized and began rescuing helpless sick puppies or volunteering at the local soup kitchen (for the stomach, that is, not soul) directly after reading any of these books. The best part was that it allowed you to be completely undeservedly self-congratulatory. Bravo, me. Bravo!

Of course, I'm clearly devilishly advocating the situation. The original book was overwhelmingly well-received by readers and critics. Most people were willing and able to look past the corniness and feel truly touched by these moving (albeit cliched) stories. There was something comforting in the predictable heartwarming-ness of each story. Sure, we knew it was sappy and possibly some of these miracles were a tad on the contrived side, but our willingness to briefly suspend our disbelief could allow us to embrace a story's happy ending.

Hansen and Canfield were brilliantly entrepreneurial in their approach and saw the potential in the not-yet fully tapped market of sappy sentimentalism. Lucky for them, all they had to do was think up countless topics and corresponding subtitles (including but not limited to Chicken Soup for the Chiropractic Soul, Chicken Soup for the Fisherman's Soul, and even Chicken Soup for the Soul Celebrates Cats and the People Who Love Them.) The editors obviously subscribed to a "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" ideology. Using basically the same essential formula, they managed to crank out book after book in the style of the original but catered to specifically market to a particular demographic.

Then came the kookier side. Books weren't enough. No, we needed Chicken Soup for the Soul calendars, Chicken Soup for the Soul Pet food, and Chicken Soup for the Soul vitamin supplements. There's nothing quite like manipulating your audience into buying a bunch of worthless crap to send a positive message of spirituality and inspiration.


Chicken Soup for the Soul Trimworks Supplements. Please note the package featuring a woman hugging a scale. It's likely she has OD'ed on the lovey-dovey feel-goodness of CSftS


Over time, the initial bowl of soup has evolved into a fully functional factory churning out can and can of the same product. This model was fitting as this was exactly what Hansen and Canfield were peddling: canned spirituality. Love it or hate it, the Chicken Soup Series was a formidable franchise from 1993 stretching through the better part of this decade. Ultimately, whether you're a firefighter, doctor, or French-African widowed quadriplegic philosopher with a taste for five-alarm chili, there is inevitably a Chicken Soup for the Soul book made just for you. Go forth and be soothed.


Some newer, odder incarnations:








Tuesday, April 14, 2009

Choose Your Own Adventure


You find yourself in an underwater palace. You see the walls slowly moving inwards on you, and begin to panic. You have 12 minutes worth of oxygen remaining.

To continue exploring the underwater palace for treasure, turn to page 18.
To swim ashore to safety, turn to page 22.

What would you do? The options are endless! Well, actually, there are only two. But, hey, I get to choose! Let's swim to safety! The word "safety" is right there! A clue!

You are nearly to the shore. Dry land is a mere 100 yards away! You notice a shark encircling you, blocking your escape to safety.

The shark eats you and you proceed to die a tragic, gory, horrifyingly gruesome death.

Okay, so maybe Choose Your Own Adventure books weren't quite so graphic, but there was a lot of dying. The publishers easily could have released a subseries entitled "Choose Your Own Death" and no one would bat an eye.

The omnipresent themes of untimely death led to the inevitable appearance of spoof CYOA covers like this one


Fortunately for persistent and patient (read: cheating) readers, there was usually one measly way out. However, if you took a single misstep (or mispage-turn, as the case may have been) you would have to spend hours retracing your path and trying to save your doomed reader self from certain death in endless capacities. The more savvy and lazy of CYOA readers would flip ahead in search of the heroically safe solution, but the real devotees suffered endless deaths in their quest for ultimate salvation.

Choose Your Own Adventure books were not solely a 90s phenomenon, but certainly enjoyed a heyday during the decade. In step with parenting trends emphasizing the individuality and uniqueness of each child, parents sought out reading experiences that would draw out their child's exceptional qualities. Okay, so maybe that isn't exactly true, but I had you there for a second, didn't I?

Initially formulated in the 1970s as Adventures of You, CYOA pioneer Edward Packard quickly saw the error of his grammatical ways and changed the title to the now known-and-loved Choose Your Own Adventure. You would be hard-pressed to find a more straightforward and self-explanatory name for a book series, but their charm was implicit in their simplicity. Perhaps they weren't literary masterpieces, but their interactivity certainly got kids reading, if only to find out all of the spine-tinglingly grisly forms of death that awaited them at every wrong page turn.

A seriously clever (if somewhat blurry) map of a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure Book from www.seanmichaelragan.com


With hilariously tongue-in-cheek titles like You are Microscopic (1992) and Tattoo of Death (1995), it was clear the series' authors didn't take themselves too seriously. Certainly there was never another series whose titles so frequently made use of poorly-placed exclamation marks. In fact, it was as if all the authors had taken some sort of Into to Choose Your Own Adventure course with a heavy focus in exclamatory punctuation. Such ridiculous titles as Hijacked! (1990), Kidnapped! (1991), Earthquake! (1992), and Typhoon! (1995) made use of this absurd formatting. It seemed to become a successful CYOA author, you needed only to think of a single theme, italicize it, add an exclamation mark, and you would be immediately added to the publisher's catalog. Come book-order time, your long-awaited title Unneccessary! would shoot to the top of the RL-6 bestseller charts.


Also notable in CYOA stylings was its unique use of familiar pronouns to address the reader directly. Usually, we open a book expecting to be a third party to the story and would be a bit shaken if the author began making direct requests of us. However, Choose Your Own Adventure books were formatted to make the reader feel as if he or she was actually directing of the action, no matter to what extent the quality and grammar would suffer. It was all about you, and it was thus necessary to begin practically every sentence with that pronoun. It's as if the authors feared that if they briefly diverged from constantly referencing the second person singular, the reader would be completely lost. "Well, wait a minute," they'd say, scratching their heads. "I thought this was about me. Why, I'm not in here at all!"

The best part of these books was that plot was generally a secondary feature. The author had used most of his or her talent and energy to produce a fully-functional interactive book that brings a reader to an ending with each read. It was almost as if the plot was an afterthought. After all, who was the author to be writing anything of substance when it was you, the reader, who was to choose his or her own adventure? To illustrate this point, I give you the back-cover copy off classic CYOA #11, Mystery of the Maya. Granted, this particular book was published in 1981, but I assure you it only got worse rather than better:


Your best friend Tom has been in Mexico for a short trip, working on a TV report on the ancient Mayan civilization. Three days ago, he vanished without a trace. The only clues you have are terrible, haunting nightmares where Tom is killed in a Mayan sacrificial ceremony. You must find him before these nightmares become reality! Can you even trust your own dreams? Maybe someone is telepathically leading you off course so you'll never reach your friend in time! What should you do next?

Of course! A Mayan sacrificial ceremony! There is really no other remotely credible explanation for your friend's disappearance. Well, except for that someone may be using their powerful influential ESP to lead you astray. Back of the book, you ask such powerfully deep questions. What should I do next?

If you've yet to get your fix of these, fear not, they're still available at fine retailers everywhere. If you're not into the retro reading, in 1998 they began publishing new CYOA titles under the cleverly-named Chooseco label. Just think, if they can select a company name like that, imagine what sort of choices they have in store for you!

Check it out:
Official Chooseco CYOA site
Choose Your Own Adventure...DVDs?

Awesome CYOA T-Shirt

Wednesday, April 8, 2009

The Eleventh Hour: A Curious Mystery



(I will admit up front that I may be cheating a tiny bit on this one. The Eleventh Hour was technically published in 1989, but it was such an integral part of my 90s childhood that I'm going to let that formality slide)

The Eleventh Hour was so much more than just a pleasantly rhyming children's story. It was an intricate mystery that grew increasingly complicated with each turn of a page, and as children we were absolutely determined to solve the complex series of riddles. More importantly, we were determined to decode the puzzles without breaking the unspeakably cool sealed section in the back. The book actually had the solution to the puzzle right there, in a tightly sealed envelope-like contraption following the story. I mean, it was right there. Oh, the temptation! The shame associated with breaking the seal was more often than not too great to go ahead and sell out to the solutions section. Sure, we would finally have the answer to the mystery we had spent the last 347 days pondering, but it would be a hollow victory.

Whenever you went over to a friend's house and saw that they had broken the seal, you could feel that unmistakable rush of superiority. You may have been fruitlessly working on the mystery for months and had only a Five Star notebook full of mistaken leads to show for it, but you had Eleventh Hour integrity, dammit. They would always try to blame it on an older brother or younger sister less ambitious than they who had gotten into the secret section first, but we knew better than to believe their shoddy Eleventh Hour justifications. We were absolutely steadfast in our commitment to solve the mystery of Horace's missing birthday lunch if it was the last thing we did. At the rate we were going, this seemed a likely possibility.



We can only imagine that somewhere out there, there is a support group for people who caved prematurely and opened the hidden world of information in the sealed Super Secret Section. Burnt-out, dead-eyed video store clerks and fry cooks clutch their styrofoam coffee cups with a slight tremor as they share with the group the tragic story of how their lives took an unfortunate but inevitable Eleventh Hour-imposed turn for the worst.

"My name is Alan, and I opened the Super Secret Section."
"Hi, Alan."
"I opened the SSS when I was 9 years old. I couldn't take it anymore. I was pretty sure I had it down to the giraffe and the zebra, but who could be sure? That pool table scene always threw me off. And that swan! What was I supposed to do? I tore through that baby, and look at me today. If I just could have held out a little longer on that envelope..."

The puzzle was admittedly overcomplicated for a child, and feasibly added to any feelings of inadequacy accrued during our formative years. Parents and babysitters would pore over the book, convinced that with age came puzzle-deciphering wisdom. However, they too were thrown by the fraudulent clues leading them in all manner of imprudent directions. Even once the initial mystery was solved, the book offered additional challenges certain to thwart even the most adept cryptographer. What was an amateur decoder to do?


Perhaps I should backtrack a bit. For those of you without an immediate recall of this gloriously illustrated children's book, let me give you the short version sans full spectacular visual accompaniment. The book's breakout star, Horace the Elephant, is celebrating his eleventh birthday. As is customary with eleventh birthday parties, he wishes to carry this ever-so-creative "eleven" theme way too far and force all of his animal friends to suffer through a whopping eleven games before they finally get to eat at (you guessed it!) eleven o'clock. Seems simple enough. But wait! Before the group reaches the coveted lunching Eleventh Hour, we discover that one of the guests, supposedly friends of our dear friend Horace, is actually a thief. Somebody has made off with all the delicious goodies Horace had painstakingly prepared for his party. Luckily, our friend Horace is quick on his feet in a distinctly un-elephant-like way and salvages the day by coming through with sandwiches. Hooray! Sandwiches!


It seems like a fairly happy ending, but Base sort of left us hanging with this one. There was a gaping hole in the story--who had eaten Horace's prized birthday meal? And thus the fun began. Well, depending on your idea of fun, that is.

I personally received this book as a gift at an age when I could barely read, let alone solve a complex series of cryptographs, but Base's beauteous illustrations alone were enough to draw me in (yes, I said "draw", and I realize that's an embarrassingly cheap pun, but let's just move on. Thank you for your cooperation.) The visuals on these books were spectacular and appealed to me at a time in my life when my major ambition was to become an artist. I fancied myself as the next Graeme Base, which clearly illustrated (I swear, that's got to be the last one) that I had an overactive imagination. After several misguided pencil tracings of The Eleventh Hour on waxed paper swiped from my kitchen drawer, I realized I would never amount to anything as an illustrator and quickly vowed to learn to read so at least I could revel in solving the puzzle to avenge my brief failed career as an artiste.

For those of you who never got around to solving the mystery, there is hope for you yet. The book is still available at fine retailers everywhere (including online). The window of opportunity to redeem yourself is open.

Just don't wait until the Eleventh Hour to do so.


Check it out:
Want to own a Graeme Base Original? Be prepared to spend a pretty penny.

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