Night Night Tyrannosaurus, board book cutes with big-kid STEM

Back in my day board books were just about caterpillars, shapes and colors. Babies, crawlers and toddlers have it so good today. Night Night Tyrannosaurus and Night Night Ladybug are board books that swim with today’s books for young demographics. Tyrannosaurus and Ladybug each have a different focus, with one being on shapes and the other on colors. It has the mandatory aspects of education, but wraps it in the pleasantries of dinosaurs or insects. My four-year-old self describes this as a win/win when it comes to board books.  

Night Night Tyrannosaurus is a board book that uses some go-to elements for toddlers and crawlers, but adds a little STEM.
Night night toddlers, hello Stem curiosity

All The Hulk Feels happily lives at the comic and illustrated book nexus

The Incredible Hulk is one of our top three superheroes. It’s the classic Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde tale, but with radiation and a couple of Avengers for good measure. All The Hulk Feels is an illustrated book. It’s an illustrated book that, through its paneled presentation, has the feel of a comic book. A comic book story a little sillier than one that you’d find on New Comic Book Day, but is equally, if not more entertaining.  

All The Hulk Feels, A Mighty Marvel Comics Picture Book, creates a new sub-genre of reading for ages four and up.
Hulk not smash this book

The Conjuring: Last Rites is fan service for the Warren faithful, that’s it

If this were a vampire movie you could say that it’s a little long in the tooth. However, this is a horror film, but it’s the fourth one in a character-based franchise that has a steady track record. The Conjuring: Last Rites has a couple of nice atmospheric scares, some cheap jump scares and a truck load of nostalgia. The film is also a victim of The Conjuring Universe. These movies want to have their cake and eat it too. It’s the ‘based on a true story’ label that only four of the nine films under its umbrella can rightfully claim. Fans of the franchise will welcome Last Rites, but horror movie fans would’ve seen it all before.

The Conjuring: Last Rites is the fourth film in the series and it feels like it. The movie is too long and relies on sentimentality, rather than atmospheric scares.
Bring outcha dead, bring outcha dead…..

Iron Man: Something Strange is fun for young readers in elementary school

When I was a teenager I loved the Marvel Team-Up comic books. Spoiler alert: I still love those comic books. It’s the thought of one cool superhero who might be slightly antagonistic, temporarily partnering with another one with complementary powers or an opposing personality. Iron Man: Something Strange is the young reader, graphic novel equivalent of those comic books. It’s the fourth in A Mighty Marvel Team-Up book series that seemingly has the goal of making reading fun and approachable to grades two through five.

Iron Man: Something Strange is the all-age graphic novel that your seven-year-old self desperately wanted. This is great fun for early elementary school ages.
Iron Man and Doctor Strange-yes please

Exploring Ghibliverse: The Ultimate Guide to Studio Ghibli

Ghibli is so ubiquitous that I accidentally started typing this in Ghibli font when I was trying to save the document under the same name. Yeah, there’s a font named after the iconic animation Japanese studio. Studio Ghibli is a filmmaker’s animation studio, much like bands that paved the way for other bands, such as The Gits or Pylon. Ghibliverse: Studio Ghibli Beyond the Films, books, music, manga and more-a guide to a magical world is a reference book with an opinion. It’s a research love letter featuring photographs of famous animators, hundreds of stills from movies and television shows, and dozens of images from the Ghibli Museum, showcasing an animation studio that produces work with its own distinctive style.

Ghibliverse: Studio Ghibli Beyond the Films is an accessible look at the animation kingdom.
You know the style, this book is encylopedic in its details

Don’t Draw in This Book! is finger-tracing laughs for ages 1-6

Last year, I was teaching a high school English class, and one of the students went rogue. They started drawing phallic shapes with various curse words directed at me. I know, normally one would expect that from elementary school students, but this student was special. Thankfully, their handwriting was poor and identical to the handwritten essays I asked them to do, thus, it was quite simple to confirm who the culprit was. Don’t Draw in This Book! is the toddler, pre-k and kindergarten entry point that kids need for a couple of reasons.

Don’t Draw in This Book! is an impossible to resist board book that engages kids one through six to touch, trace, laugh and learn.
The press the button series is a go-to for toddlers

Nobody 2 is good-stupid fun, for the most part….as long as you aren’t picky

What makes Bob Odenkirk so enjoyable as an action protagonist is his ‘everyman appeal’. In Nobody, the character was well-written. The first major set piece, a taut bus fight scene kicked off a nice vengeance movie that harkened to the golden days of the 1980s. The film was received so positively that it begot a sequel whose title doesn’t pull any punches, Nobody 2. Nobody 2 knows the assignment and admirably fits in the box, and does so in a manner that audiences have come to expect from sequels.

Nobody 2 is about 70% as good as Nobody, which according to the unofficial rule of action movie sequels is just below average.
A low bar is not an issue for films that embrace it

Sibling Adventures in Axolotl and Axolittle: A Picture Book for Kids

In my Venn Diagram of animals big and small I have an axolotl and a quetzalcoatlus. I know that quetzalcoatlus, according to fossil records, lived near Mexico; and that its much smaller phonetic friend, axolotl, is native to two freshwater lakes near Mexico City. Those STEM kids know what an axolotl looks like, but they’ve probably never seen one in real life. Even saying its name is fun, axolotl. It simply begs for an illustrated book like Axolotl and Axolittle.

Axolotl and Axolittle is a picture book with big, cute characters, who are small in real life, but pack a powerful punch that softly teaches amongst the laughs. .
The cuteness can not be escaped from

Copy Protected by Chetan's WP-Copyprotect.