Children's book reviews, all age comic books, Kidlit, mglit, movies, entertainment and parenting
Daddy Mojo lives in Atlanta. When something special that is happening only in Atlanta he’ll post it here.
When I was in elementary school I entered a regional writing contest. All of the regional winners were published in a book with a forest green cover that my family kept in their magazine rack for decades. Georgia Public Broadcasting is having their annual PBS KIDS Writers Contest. It’s open for kindergarten through third grade and kids can write fiction, non-fiction, poetry or a graphic novel.
The Dragon Con family. It’s a strange thing referring to a major fan convention of 75,000+ as ‘family’, but it’s not an inaccurate title. This was the first year I consciously heard the phrase, but it’s highly likely that it was used around me over the past 15 years. Dragon Con, in and of itself, is a unique thing to experience and comprehend. It’s a massive celebration of pop culture that happens over Labor Day in Atlanta.
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.
Our children have been going to Momocon since they were four and six. They were rabid about Pokémon for a year or two and gravitated towards board games, one of them has fallen in love with wrestling and both of them have always loved the cosplay that they see. Eight years on they were both very eager to go to MomoCon, but I wasn’t sure what would interest them the most when we got there.
The current rage in our area for kids aged 14 and up is to go on roller coasters. I feel as if I’m 85 years old when I write that statement. Roller coasters and thrill rides are a constant and when I was 14 years old, much to the bewilderment of my parents, I wanted to go on them too. The bewilderment is still a constant, but this time it’s our 14-year-old who was slightly bemused (or secretly pleased), that I wanted to go on the rides now. Parents of thrill ride kids have it coming when they have to the chaperone and when it was my turn to visit Six Flags Over Georgia I did my homework.
Every August when I introduce myself to students I give them the FAQ about my life. One of the things that I mention to them is that I go to Dragon Con each year to play video games and listen to the scientists who are speaking. “Do you dress up like a dragon?” is what the smarmy response that a couple of the well-meaning, but curious kids will utter. This year when they asked I said “Yes, and I’ll be talking with jet propulsion specialists, NASA engineers, and others who have been integral in the outer space discoveries for decades to come.” I’ve been practicing my ‘yes, and’ method of shutting down or continuing conversations in the manner of improv comedy.
There is something about samurai warriors that conjure up every corner of our imagination. Your age or sex doesn’t matter; it’s the thought of dozens of skilled warriors battling it out with thick wooden sticks, sharp swords, and body armor made from ancient craftsmen that feed that fire. Granted, adults of a certain age may also channel their inner samurai with a set of Ginsu Knives. More cerebral folks might study Japanese history and the evolution that samurai had over hundreds of years in Japan. Samurai: Armor from the Collection of Ann and Gabriel Barbier-Mueller is on display until September 17, 2023, at High Museum of Art and is an exhibition that will entertain all of those camps and more.
MomoCon 2023 is in the books and it marks the seventh time that we’ve attended with our children. They’re 13 and 11 now and the difference in how they’ve engaged with the con is dramatic and has kept up with the times. I’ll explain more about that in a moment, but one of the first things out of mouth, when I tell teachers or parents about MomoCon, is that it truly is an all-ages con.
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