kottke.org posts about kids
My daughter is home sick from daycare, and I’m letting her watch my phone unlimitedly. She’s absorbed in it but made an exception to look up and point at the above picture, from an entry in Chadwick Matlin’s newsletter Writ Small, about the book Today, by Julie Morstad. The newsletter highlights kids’ media — “think Bluey, but stuff that isn’t Bluey” — and so far the worst part is that I want to buy everything it recommends.
I also learned a lot from this installment on a song from the 2021 My Little Pony movie. (thx, Gillian!)
Yesterday at our library’s Story Time, the reader chose a book that knocked my socks off: Little Witch Hazel: A Year in the Woods, by Phoebe Wahl, from 2021. (Trailer above.) It’s about a tiny witch who lives in the forest, and it follows her on her adventures through the seasons. (The book is divided into four sections.) The kids in the crowd — ages two through five — were mostly entranced.
Two of the book’s most beautiful pages are available as prints; my favorite is above.
Wahl’s website also led me to an illustrated editorial she did for the NYT last year: “The Joys of Swimming While Fat.”
Right on time for all upcoming feasts, it’s “Holiday Recipes Dictated by Kindergarteners,” in the newsletter Bright Spots, by Chris Duffy. (His friend, a kindergarten teacher, had her students “collectively dictate to her how they believe their favorite Thanksgiving dishes were made.”) For instance, turkey:
Click through for further instructions on how to prepare stuffing, cranberry sauce, and pumpkin pie. Where was this two weeks ago?
Watching the teenagers from Parkland, Florida instigate change and challenge leadership has been inspiring, to say the least. If anything, it’s a reminder that while it’s probably too late for our generation to make any real change, the kids these days are on it.
Tim Kreider’s op-ed Go Ahead, Millennials, Destroy Us encourages this new crop of activists. (thx Jessa)
My message, as an aging Gen X-er to millennials and those coming after them, is: Go get us. Take us down — all those cringing provincials who still think climate change is a hoax, that being transgender is a fad or that “socialism” means purges and re-education camps. Rid the world of all our outmoded opinions, vestigial prejudices and rotten institutions. Gender roles as disfiguring as foot-binding, the moribund and vampiric two-party system, the savage theology of capitalism — rip it all to the ground. I for one can’t wait till we’re gone. I just wish I could live to see the world without us.
Emma Gray’s timely book The Girl’s Guide to the Resistance: A Feminist Handbook on Fighting for Good is relevant for kids of all genders who want to get involved (though soon enough, they’ll be writing the books explaining change to us).
In this week’s series from The Cut, How To Raise a Boy Michael Kimmel says that instead of shaming bad behavior, we should focus on positive growth.
Fathers: If you want a story to tell your sons, tell that story, the time you did the wrong thing because you were scared. That’s the story we grown men must tell our sons. We must tell them for their sake, because it can help them acknowledge the ways that they, too, may feel pulled between their own values and those of others. But we must also tell them for our own sake, so that we can finally acknowledge the damage done to us, done to our hearts, our souls, by the demands of trying to deny our humanity and be real men.
Caroline Rothstein on how Kids came about and what happened to the young actors who starred in the film.
Two decades after a low-budget film turned Washington Square skaters into international celebrities, the kids from Kids struggle with lost lives, distant friendships, and the fine art of growing up.
A review of Cinderella, by Shanie, age six:
One day there was going to be a fancy ball. Cinderella wasn’t going to get to go, but then something very exciting happened. I liked to read this book because I like fairy tales. I also like to read about evil people. It’s exciting and a little scary. I would recommend this book about Cinderella to my mom because she likes to do chores.
The Spaghetti Book Club provides book reviews “by kids, for kids.” It’s incredible. The kid-crafted illustrations that accompany the reviews are just as fridge-worthy.
Regarding the theory that kids are set up for disappointment and failure later in life when they value their innate gifts too highly over their ability to grow, this Scientific American article claims that the key to developing a child’s potential is teaching the child that the greatest reward comes from effort, not intelligence or ability.
The students who held a fixed mind-set, however, were concerned about looking smart with little regard for learning. They had negative views of effort, believing that having to work hard at something was a sign of low ability. They thought that a person with talent or intelligence did not need to work hard to do well. Attributing a bad grade to their own lack of ability, those with a fixed mind-set said that they would study less in the future, try never to take that subject again and consider cheating on future tests.
via Marginal Revolution
My anxiously-awaited Top 3 Picks from WXPN’s Top 10 Kids’ CDs of 2007:
- ‘Do What the Spirit Say Do’ by Sweet Honey in the Rock (uptempo Gospel to instantly elevate)
- ‘Have You Ever Really Looked at an Egg?’ by Peter Himmelman (well, have you?)
- ‘Poopsmith Song’ by Over the Rhine (because the speak-singing of the chorus is perfectly deadpan)
- and Honorable Mention for ‘Brush Your Teeth’ by the Dream Jam Band (for Mr. T-like earnestness and urban realism)
The Firefly is a cell phone for kids. It doesn’t have a keypad, but it’s got dedicated buttons for calling mom and dad and accessing the parentally controlled address book.
Drawings of war from children caught up in the Sudanese cleansing in Darfur. “Without any instruction or guidance, the children drew scenes from their experiences of the war in Darfur: the attacks by the Janjaweed, the bombings by Sudanese government forces, the shootings, the burning of entire villages, and the flight to Chad.”
Video for a kids version of Since U Been Gone. There’s nothing awesomer than this. The slow-mo crowd reaction shots, a tiger doing a David Lee Roth jump split, kids shouting during the chorus….are you kidding me? None more awesome!
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