Showing posts with label kids. Show all posts
Showing posts with label kids. Show all posts

Thursday, October 10, 2013

Fortunately, The Milk by Neil Gaiman

Yesterday at the library, I picked up Neil Gaiman's new book for young readers, called "Fortunately, the Milk". The book is a quick read for adults like me and much lighter in tone and content than Gaiman's usual fare. "Milk" is a story told by an imaginative father to his two children, after taking a very long time to go to the corner store for milk. 

He meets pirates; a time-traveling, talking inventor who happens to be a Stegosaurus; island natives and their volcano God; and other odd characters along the way. The story is charming, amusing and the illustrations, by Skottie Young, are a perfect fit for the quirky nonsensical tale. 


Monday, June 24, 2013

Movies of the 80's

I recently wrote a post about some movies I consider "classic" family movies, that every kid should see. Today, I thought it might be fun to make a list of some of the best films of the 1980's, since parents of my generation have a soft spot for them, but the next generation might have missed them. These are not movies I consider "must-see", but they are fun.

Saturday, November 24, 2012

Wreck-It Ralph: A Review of Sorts

My three youngest children went with their uncle Dave and their younger cousins to see "Wreck-It Ralph" on Wednesday and came home praising it and saying how much they loved it. Adam, 16, said I had to go see it and that I would just love it. Ben, 13, said that I would cry at the end. To which Adam said, "Well, that's not saying much; she cries at every movie." (Which is almost true.)They all enjoyed it, including Katie, 10, who said it was hilarious and they told us that the rest of us should go see it in theater for sure. So we did. Kriss and our oldest, Jonah, 17, went tonight. 

The movie begins strong, with the bad guys in a support group meeting, and there are some funny lines and good sight gags. When Ralph leaves his game and begins an adventure, I thought we would see what happened as he moved in and out of lots of games. Unfortunately, Ralph (and the movie) gets stuck in a game called "Sugar Rush" where adorable little girl avatars race around a "Candyland"-esque world. The story stalls badly (no pun intended) and I quickly lost interest. The little girl that Ralph gets entagled with (she steals his medal, he wants it back... yawn...) is cute, but obnoxious and their sometimes potty-humor-laced banter isn't as funny to me as it would be to a 10-12 year old kid.