There are certain things or instances that, regardless of your adult age, immediately transport you back to when you were younger. It could be a certain place, a specific day, or a period in your life, but that thing can transport you back quicker and more accurately than any TARDIS ever will be able to. Highlights. Highlights for Children was the sole point of our visits to the dentist that we actively remember and didn’t loathe. You’d find the most recent issue of Highlights, and quickly turn to the activity that was least likely to have been filled in or marked by previous patients. Yeah, Highlights has always been available by subscription, but for you, it was your go-to dentist jam. Can I get a whoot, whoot if you remember that? The Highlights Big Book of Activities for Little Kids has the same go-to level of pre-k through mid-elementary school enjoyment and ownership as the magazine, except this packaging is bigger, better, and longer.
Which came first the chicken or the egg? That question is one that older readers might ponder after reading The Day the River Caught Fire. It’s the non-fiction story of how the Cuyahoga River in Cleveland, Ohio caught fire and led to the creation of Earth Day. We just got back from Hollywood Studios in Orlando where the water catching on fire was one of the standout elements in a nighttime show. It’s a simple effect that does a great job at making audiences impressed due to the issue that one can easily defeat the other. However, water, due to its nature, should not catch on fire, should it?
The Ready To Read book series is one of the most easily identifiable line ups for kids who level up their reading. They consist of five levels that range from sight words to chapters that deal with challenging vocabulary levels, as well as, character development. Flashback to the….. Awesome ‘80s! is a level two book that puts it in the Superstar Reader! category. Most nine-year olds will be able to Flashback to the…. Awesome ‘80s! with ease. Some eight-year olds will be able to read the book with assistance. There’ll be a couple of first graders who will open the book, curious to see what sight words they can wrangle from the text. Any elementary school student will be attracted to the book. They’ll giggle at the fashion, marvel at the brick, and try to fathom a time when all children’s television programming was only available on Saturday morning.
Stop, collaborate and read-it’s fun for pre-k through 2nd grade
Yes, mom and dad are weird and grew up in a time that was much closer to the dinosaurs than you’re growing up. Now you have a book that you early elementary-aged kids can read, all the while, mocking your parents for not have a mobile computer in their shirt pocket. The only radio that you had was a massive, grey box that weighed about 13 pounds. It could play the radio, but couldn’t stream anything and was only able to play mix tapes.
Yeah, but we also had the Sony Walkman, which was a portable way to play those cassette tapes in a way to where only we could hear them. Of course, there were some off-brand portable cassette players that were similar to them, but quite different. Our off-brand Walkman couldn’t rewind, so if we wanted to repeat a song for friends then we had to flip the tap over, fast forward, and then guess as to where our new favorite song started.
Thankfully, for today’s elementary school readers, there’s a glossary of terms used in Flashback to the….. Awesome ’80s! That 13 pound weight was also called a boom box. The device that answered our phone was an answering machine. Rad was what kids used to say when something was worse than mid. Mid, you kids today know all about that, don’t you? While we’re revisiting the 80’s, let me suggest that the mullet be one of the things that we leave back there, even though it breaks my achy breaky heart.
There are three chapters of glorious 80’s throwbacks that will make kids laugh out loud and shake their heads in disbelief. Yes, we were that lame, that gloriously, shoulder-padded, video game controller that wasn’t wireless, floppy disc having, neon colors aplenty lame. It’s a Ready to Read book that wallows in the fun, slaps color patterns that make parents grin out of remembrance to the days when movies weren’t all remakes or created using CGI.
Flashback to the…… Awesome ‘80s! is elementary school water cooler fun that has the ‘it’ factor. Those young ages will share the book, howl with laughter at the thought of their parents having such things, and then hide in the corner when their parents actually have the real deal in their basement. This is where it’s important to distinguish between collecting memorabilia and having too much stuff. If I have one rotary telephone it’s being quirky and not hoarding. Granted, this could also qualify as office supplies or background details for Youtube, but now it just sounds like I’m making excuses for my messy office…..back to the book.
This book series is dependably great and Flashback to the….. Awesome ’80! is the sort of LOL book that younger kids will want to read. Those kids who can read it easily will do so and have conversations about how great it is now when compared to when you grew up. While they do that, you can start earmarking all of the touchstones that today’s kids have that will seem archaic and quaint in 40 years.
Flashback to the….. Awesome ‘80s! is in the Ready-to-Read book series and is available from Simon Spotlight, an imprint of Simon & Schuster.
The only way that The Sublime Ms. Stacks could be more polarizing is if each book came with a lightning rod. There is no gray area on this illustrated book. It’s a book that can be admired for its forthright thinking but will also leave many wondering how it could be so tone-deaf. The Sublime Ms. Stacks will leave most readers wondering why the book exists, while a couple of them will say that it didn’t come onto the scene soon enough.
When I was a kid I wouldn’t talk for a couple of hours because I liked to imagine that I had a finite amount of words that I could speak on a given day. And if I was to use up my words with something silly, then that would just be wasteful, and my parents wouldn’t have liked that, would they? I Can Explain is an illustrated book from that same vein of illogical thinking that makes perfect sense if you’re a kid.
Have you seen the Whitney Houston clip where she was recounting how Kevin Costner sole her on the idea of re-recording I Will Always Love You? Apparently, he really enjoyed country music and had presented the 1974 original song from Dolly Parton to Houston as an option for the movie that the two of them were making. The rest is history. Houston had the biggest song of her career and the first cultural renaissance of Dolly Parton had begun, not that she ever went anywhere. Dazzlin’ Dolly is an illustrated book that provides elementary school audiences with a great overview of her early life.
When is a pop-up book not a pop-up book? We love high-quality, intricate pop-up books but readily acknowledge that their complexity paired with their price point makes them an unrealistic option for younger, unsupervised audiences. An Abrams Unfolds Books is a series from Abrams Books for Young Readers that takes the pop-up elements that attract pre-k audiences and puts them in a package that’s durable and less likely to get destroyed. The Spider-Verse Unfolds is the second book in the series and visits Miles Morales, as well as, some others from his spider-centric world.
The issue with most craft books that we’ve run across is that they’re too complex. The end creation looks great, but it requires too many things to make it and has far too many steps. It’s worth noting that I’m a relatively handy guy also. I have a garage full of stuff to fix most simple things in a house and have two boys over ten, so we’ve acquired lots of craft things too. Having said that, every craft or maker book that we’ve tried to do has fallen short. P.S.-We Made This! does not the aforementioned issues. Instead, it’s a book of 85 relatively simple crafts or projects that mid-through upper elementary students can do with minimal to no assistance.
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