Olive and I had the pleasure of attending our first movie world premiere on Saturday, with the premiere of Epic the Movie at the Ziegfeld.

I promised Olive that we’d be walking the red carpet. (Why, yes, our designer IS Old Navy. Thank you for noticing our fashion.)  Imagine her consternation, though, when she saw that there was “green grass” and not “red carpet.” Her outraged lasted until we got inside and she spotted the free popcorn and giant table full of tiny Baked by Melissa cupcakes. (She could get used to this lifestyle.)

We were a good hour before the celebs came through the red carpet. I highly recommend the Kidzvuz interviews with the cast as they came in, including Colin Farrell, Chris O’Dowd, Jason Sudeikis, and Amanda Seyfried.

The biggest difference between seeing a world premiere and a regular ol’ movie is that people clap and cheer for the production company logo and during the credits, the producer, director, and art director get much bigger cheers than any of the cast. Also, director Chris Wedge introduced the film.

I’ll have a full review up on GeekMom on Friday, but for now I’ll say this — make some time to see it this weekend. In the meantime, here’s the stunning trailer.

Wanna know something crazy? Today marks five years since my very first post on Media Macaroni! Crazy, right?

To give you a sense of what five years is like in tech years, I didn’t even have an apps category at first. This was my phone when I first started the blog:

Even in my first post, I describe my work in CD-ROMs and DVDs. That’s adorable. Since then it’s been Nintendo and Leap Frog and Nook and apps, apps, apps.

And this is what my progeny looked like when the blog began:

Olive was about to turn three, and Ozzie wouldn’t come along for another two years.

So much growth and change in five years! As always, I’m so grateful for you, the most treasured people who read my blog. Thanks for coming along for the ride!

This Thursday, May 23, head down to Times Square at 11:00 am to see an unveiling of the world’s largest Lego model. All I can say is that it has something to do with The Yoda Chronicles, set to premiere on Cartoon Network on May 29th.

Disappointed you won’t be. Trust me you must.

I’m warning you, don’t read this post if there are productive things that you’re meant to be doing right now. I happened on GeoGuessr in a friend’s Facebook feed on Friday afternoon, and the remaining memories of Friday are a little hazy. It’s possible all I did was play this game. Fortunately, the kids dig it too.

GeoGuessr plunks you down somewhere in the world. You could be anywhere. (Well, anywhere covered by Google’s Street View.) Imagine if you really were dropped somewhere and you didn’t know where you are. You’d start to look for clues, right? You can navigate around and start to narrow it down. What language are the signs in? What side of the road are the cars driving on? What’s the architecture and the foliage like? When you’re ready to guess, you can click the world map and get points for how close you come.

We’ve been discussing house rules for this game. My husband got one down to the street by looking at signage, and at first Olive and I thought that was cheating. We softened when we started to Google what we were finding.

For instance. Look at this pretty scenery. Got a guess as to where it is?

Wait. Turn to the left. A tunnel! Hmmm. The plot thickens.

Go through the tunnel and find a sign on the other side. Well that’s a pretty good clue.

Google break….

We found a map and got pretty darn close.

We also found YouTube videos of driving through this Ohmori Tunnel in Kamoenai Village, Hokkaido, Japan. Isn’t that crazy and amazing? GeoGuessr is such a great path to global discoveries. And now all Ozzie wants to do is watch YouTube videos of tunnels.

Tomorrow’s a big day. Ozzie is turning 3! I know I should be wistful for the end of the baby years, but it’s so much fun to have a big boy. He’s not yet a reliable witness for this interview since he pretty much only thinks about what he’s done in the last 15 minutes, so the rest of the family determined the favorites from Ozzie’s time as a 2-year-old.

Favorite Book: No, David!
A great fit for any 2-year-old, really. We went through quite a long spell where Ozzie would want every one of the No, David series that we have in the house (including David Goes To School and David Gets In Trouble) at bedtime, and nothing else. Honorable mentions for the year go to Go, Dog. Go! and Taro Gomi’s Bus Stops.

Favorite App: Toca Train
Ozzie’s a whiz with the iPad, and loves all of the Toca Boca apps, but Toca Train tops them all. I think it’ the power of driving the train. Pepi Bath got quite a bit of play this year, too.

Favorite eBook: Hansel and Gretel
This is a new category for these interviews, but interactive eBooks have really become a thing this past year, and the one that Ozzie plays most frequently is Hansel and Gretel by PB&J Publishing. It’s got beautiful art and nice voiceover. There are parts of it that freak Ozzie out a bit, but I think that may be part of the draw, like he’s building up his courage or something like that.

Favorite TV Show: Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood
Yo Gabba Gabba was knocked out of the top slot in Ozzie’s TV roundup thanks to the new Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood. I think he sees in Daniel a totally relatable kid with experiences that model his own. The musical jingles in each episode are a big draw, too. SuperWHY has also been in pretty heavy rotation lately, and he dabbled in Sid the Science Kid this year, too.

Favorite Museum: Museum of Mathematics
I think both of the kids have been favoring the new MoMATH, with its math-themed rides, puzzles, and projects. The size of the museum is also nice — two floors that never feel overwhelming.

Favorite Music: “Bubble Factory” by Recess Monkey
Ozzie lives and breathes this video. He’s obsessed with both garages and Recess Monkey’s mascot, Mayor Monkey. Everything that even remotely functions like a garage door in Ozzie’s daily life — the medicine cabinet, the butter door of the refrigerator, the hood on his jacket — becomes a space where he can imagine Mayor Monkey inside. He’s also very big into hiding in the curtains with his microphone so that he can pretend he’s on Yo Gabba Gabba introducing the Super Music Friends Show. When he does, he always introduces the same video, Of Montreal with “Bananas, Rice, Applesauce, Toast”.

Favorite Toy: Little People Wheelies Stow ‘n Tow Garage
Did I mention a garage obsession? It’s no secret in our family, so for Christmas Ozzie received two different versions of the Stow ‘n Tow Garage (on is Cars-branded). They’ve got handles at the top and Ozzie will walk around the apartment carrying his two garages. It’s pretty darn cute.

I can’t wait to see what the next year brings!

Previously:

Interview with a 2-Year-Old

Favorites From the First Year

Leave it to me to finally post about Nation Poetry Month just minutes before it ends. I know you’ve spent every April day lounging around reading poetry to one another, but if there’s a chance that you aren’t all poetry-ed out, here are some books for your enjoyment.

I’d heard of Jack Prelutsky for a number of years, but am embarrassed to say that I never read his work until HarperCollins recently loaded me up with three of his books. Growing up, I was a Shel Silverstein fanatic, and Jack Prelutsky triggers all the same pleasure centers in my brain. His poetry is goofy and clever and clearly has broad kid appeal. Two of his collections, The New Kid on the Block and A Pizza the Size of the Sun remind me of the long afternoons I spent reading Where the Sidewalk Ends. These are books that you can pop open to any random page and have a laugh. For example:

Do Not Approach an Emu

Do not approach an emu,

the bird does not esteem you.

It wields a quick and wicked kick

that’s guaranteed to cream you.

Stardines Swim High Across the Sky: and Other Poems is a lovely picture book where Jack Prelutsky’s poems are accompanied by gorgeous photo illustrations by Carin Berger. The book is like a cabinet of curiosities to peruse, telling tales of creatures like Plandas and Jollyfish and Slobsters and Braindeer.

A poetry compilation for animal lovers is the National Geographic Book of Animal Poetry, edited by U.S. Children’s Poet Laureate J. Patrick Lewis. It’s a gigantic coffee table book filled with luscious animal photography — I’m such a sucker for that stuff — that’s paired with poems from tons of well known names, including Robert Frost, (my fave) Calef Brown, Jane Holen, What Whitman, Emily Dickinson, and yes, Jack Prelutsky.

Sea Jelly by Kelly Ramsdell Fineman

It’s not made of jelly; it isn’t a fish.

Mostly it drifts, but can move with a swish.

It doesn’t have lungs or a brain; most can’t see.

It captures its dinner tentacularly.

Named after a Gorgon who turned men to stone,

It’s best if you leave this Medusa alone.

OK, people, I can’t believe I’m saying this either, but Jeff Foxworthy has written a book of poetry that’s actually kinda cute. Everything in Dirt on My Shirt should be read in Jeff Foxworthy’s voice for maximum effect:

Snakes Alive!

I looked out the window and saw a snake

Crawling around in the yard

My dad tried to find it, but it got away

I don’t think he looked very hard.

A Poem as Big as New York City: Little Kids Write About the Big Apple is less a book of poetry than a beautiful collaborative art project that just happened to take a book-shaped form. This project from the Teachers and Writers Collaborative sewed together hundreds of lines of poetry written by NYC students into a tapestry of a poem that captures what it’s like to live in a place with so many sounds and sights and voices. Here’s an excerpt (but close your eyes and picture it with stunning collage-style art of the city:

Where I’m from,

there is a poem that jumps

inside a yellow cab–

ZOOM! WHOOSH!

All around New York City!

On top of the taxi is a flashing message for all to see:

People of the city, dream BIG,

dream BIGGER than a poem

that splats itself in bubble gum

across the trains

and break dances

to the pitter-patter of drums

and the bongo beats below

coming from the subway!

This books makes me want to give my city a hug. I love student work, and to see it brought together so artfully and creatively is a treat to share with my little New Yorkers.

OK, so I missed April. It turns out you can read poetry in other months, too, and I recommend doing so.

In case you haven’t heard, Amazon is getting into the content business. Having devoured all of House of Cards on Netflix, I like where this trend of new players is headed. What’s cool is that these Amazon Originals include children’s shows, and all six of the pilots have potential. I highly recommend watching them all and taking the survey to help decide which become series. Bear in mind some of these are animatics still in production and you only get glimpses of their final form. Here’s what we thought of them.

Sara Solves It: This one is Ozzie’s clear favorite. It was the first one he gravitated towards and then it’s all he wanted to watch for days. I couldn’t even watch the other pilots until today because he’s obsessed with Sara Solves It. And no wonder, it’s made by our friends at Out of the Blue productions, who also brought us Ozzie’s fav, Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood. Sara and her brother Sam live in an apartment building where there are all kinds of math hijinks. What Sara solves are math problems like addition and pattern making, with the math concepts integrated into the show. It’s delightful. This show also gets bonus points for starring two main characters of color.

Tumbleaf: This one is my favorite, and it’s a close second for Ozzie. It’s got a bit of a Fantastic Mr. Fox quality to it, with gorgeous animation (in the parts where it’s finished). The story has some weird fantasy moments and characters that make it hugely compelling, like when strange fuzzy creature beckon Fig the Fox to the “finding place” or when he puts on a rainbow kite suit to fly high in the sky. There’s some STEM stuff happening here, as science concepts crop up throughout the episode, but it’s never heavy-handed.

Annebots: This is the only one of the pilots for older kids, and because of Ozzie’s domination of the Amazon viewing I haven’t had a chance to show Olive yet. I think she’ll like it, though. Why? A cool girl inventor that hangs out in the junkyard building android helpers for her experiments. When the new boy in the neighborhood happens upon the junkyard, he begs to be her human helper because she’s just so cool.

Creative Galaxy: Another entry from Out of the Blue, this show is all about art and creativity. I have an art background, so I’m all for introducing the kids to works of art. Ozzie pointed at the screen and said, “Look at THAT picture!” It was the Mona Lisa. There’s also a Ferris-Bueller-inspired moment of looking deeply into A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grand Jatte, the George Seurat painting, before leading into a lesson on pointillism.  My only beefs with this show is that some of the dialog is heavy-handed with the characters “thinking” and “being creative,” and for a show about creative expression, it totally throws architecture under the bus. (The premise is that the architect Mom’s library is too blah, so they have to go make art for it.)

Teeny Tiny Dogs: This one comes from The Jim Henson Company, and when it’s done it’s going to be all puppets. Ozzie didn’t grab onto this show, but I think when it’s done with puppets he will. It’s all about a doggie day care, and it deals with the social-emotional stuff that little kids go through at their own day care – being left by mom and dad, making new friends, trying new things, etc. And if there’s one thing that Henson consistently does well, it’s music. There’s a great musical number midshow that again will be awesome with puppets.

Positively Ozitively: Really, just for title alone this should top our list. I’m sure to be saying this to Ozzie from now on. I like this show more in concept than in execution (though the bit of finished animation looked cool). It’s little kid versions (or the kids of?) the characters from The Wizard of Oz. Dot and her dog can travel freely to Oz where they visit with their friends. In the pilot, Dot is looking for a gift for her mother, and travels through Oz looking for a wishing hat to wish for the perfect present. This being preschool TV, Dot naturally realizes (spoiler!) that she must make her own gift for mom. That ends up making Oz feel like a convenient plot device and not an integral part of the story.

I hope Amazon decides to move forward with all of the shows. Even for the shows that I liked less, I’d still like to see more.

A few of my books to be reviewed have lately made it into heavy rotation at bedtime, largely in the same order. Two of the books get Ozzie all wound up, and the last winds him down for sleep. Funny thing is that Olive’s been hanging out around the edges of this picture book storytime, too, sometimes jumping in to participate. You’re never too old for picture books.

Everything Goes: In the Air by Brian Biggs

Though he’s been on airplanes before, it’s only our recent trip to Phoenix that Ozzie really remembers. His newfound interest in airplanes is well matched to Brian Biggs’ hidden picture book. It’s a little tricky as a read-aloud as it features giant detailed Where’s Waldo-style spreads filled with a million things to look at. There’s a narrative thread of a boy traveling with his family, so we mostly follow that. But each night we look at different things. Tonight I told Olive that the book has the numbers 1 to 100 hidden on the pages, as well as birds with hats and things that don’t belong. So she’s hunting these things down while Ozzie and I craft the pages into a storyline.

Monsters Love Colors by Mike Austin

Scribble, scribble, mix, dance, and wiggle! We wiggle around with these monsters who show us their favorite colors. The yellow monster’s favorite color is yellow. The red monster’s favorite color is red. And can you guess the favorite color of the blue monster? There are four little gray monsters that want to be a favorite color, too, so the monsters scribble and wiggle and make orange, green, purple, and … wait! What will the last monster be? Rainbow, of course! This book makes for a fun read aloud because Ozzie’s so ready to shout out all of the color names, and he’ll wiggle when they wiggle.

Tiptoe Joe by Ginger Foglesong Gibson

This is a great book to use to wind things down. Tiptoe Joe is a bear, and when he passes each friend in the forrest, he gets them to join him. “Donkey, Donkey, come with me. I know something you should see.” And Donkey goes clop clop following Tiptoe Joe. He invites each friend to come along, and the they all follow with their special sound: clop clop, thump thump, flap flap, thud thud, swish swish, slap slap to which Tiptoe Joe says, “SHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!” But where are they going? Why do they have to be quiet? Tiptoe Joe leads them all back to his home where his little babies are fast asleep. The animal sounds are good for reading alound, and we’ve paired them with some hand gestures. Then, with some exaggerated shushing and whispery reading, eyelids are drooping by the end of the book.

I’m so happy that my niece, Elizabeth, is back with another book review. Today I had the pleasure of Skyping with four 6th grade Language Arts classes in Elizabeth’s school, and a bunch of her friends are gearing up to write some reviews! I always love hearing what the kids think. 

The Percy Jackson and the Olympians series is by far my favorite book series yet. This series by Rick Riordan is filled to the brim with full-packed, heart-stopping chapters that will surely whisk you away, as they did me. These books are easy, quick reads for me, but I wouldn’t read these if you are less than nine years old and have struggles reading about deaths. You should especially be aware of tragic deaths in books 3-5.

“Nico buys Happy Meals for the Dead” is just one of the chapter titles in book four. It states random things you would probably never put together, yet seems to go along with the events of the chapter. This is how most of the chapter titles are. Most will make you say “What the heck is going on in that chapter?”

Percy starts off as a troubled ADHD, dyslexic child with one friend, a patient mother, and a smelly stepdad. He doesn’t know much about his father except for the fact that he worked on the seas. His mother’s strange confidence that his father is still alive confuses him. He’s never contacted or visited Percy or his mother.

One day on a fieldtrip his pre-algebra teacher turns into a bat/hag and attacks him. When Percy’s Latin teacher throws him a sword to defend himself, Percy swings at the bat/hag thing and hits it, turning it to dust.

Percy spends the rest of the year thinking he is going mad. It isn’t until his best friend Grover starts acting weird around Percy that makes him suspect that he might be missing a little information.

That summer Grover leads Percy to a little camp tucked away on Long Island. There he learns things about history — his history.  He finds himself learning to work with a sword and finding out he is not alone.

However, this summer camp is no ordinary camp. It is packed with demigods. What is a demigod you might ask? A demigod is a person who is half mortal and half Greek God. Take Percy, for example. His mother is mortal and his father is Poseidon, the Greek sea god.

Percy meets the books’ leading lady there: Annabeth. Annabeth is my favorite character in the books. She is smart, brave, and beautiful, what every girl wants to be. She plays the biggest role next to Percy. She and Percy go on exciting adventures throughout the books.

The world of Percy Jackson is a world where all of the Greek gods actually exist. They control his world and we can’t even see any of the Greek world due to Riordan’s creative invention, the mist. The mist blocks out all mortals from seeing what really is going on.

Enemies of the Gods are stirring and suddenly Percy finds himself facing Enemy #1: Kronos.

Rick Riordan knocked it out of the ballpark with this one, sucking me and thousands of other people around the world into the world of Percy Jackson. If you enjoyed the Percy Jackson series, I would recommend reading the Heroes of Olympus series. This book still takes place in the world of Percy Jackson, but you will meet some new characters. I would also recommend The Demigod Diaries, which explains towards the end of the book how the series was written.  Do not read any of the recommended books without reading the Percy Jackson series first!

Our choice for a spring break destination was an easy choice this year. My in-laws just moved to Phoenix and we’ve never been there… or anywhere else resembling the desert for that matter. We knew so little about Phoenix, so we had no idea of how much we’d discover.

On our first day, we headed to the The Children’s Museum of Phoenix. We’ve been to a ton of children’s museums, and there were features in this museum that I’ve never seen anywhere else. Set in a giant old school building, the best feature is an enormous climbing structure that’s like an homage to recycling. Not only are there area to explore like an old bathtub or car parts, but everywhere you look, upcycled art dangles. It’s big enough for mom and dad to fit in, too, which is great when you don’t want to send your little climbers up on their own.

There’s a car wash that you can ride trikes through, an art lab where the kids painted a giant pink rocket, and a hilarious eagle whose fan-blade wings launch little eaglets out of the nest. My favorite, favorite space was a room designed for fort-making. Old doors, headboards, and ladders flanked the room, lined with hooks and other hardware. Huge squares of fabric had ribbons sewn to the sides to slide right onto the hooks on the wall. Clamps and crates rounded out the fort-making tools. What an easy thing to do in a play space! Seriously, I might even try this in our tiny apartment.

We also visited the Arizona Science Center, filled with great hands-on exhibits. My kids loved the ball and water play area, but the home building and physics areas were a big hit, too. Olive lifted her own weight with a pulley, laid on a bed on nails, and was treated to a demonstration about air pressure.

After Pittsburgh, I thought we’d never find such a kid-friendly museum town. Phoenix definitely gives Pittsburgh a run for its money.

For our big tourist destination we went to the Goldfield Ghost Town. We had lunch in the old saloon, took a train ride, and panned for “gold” (really just bits of semiprecious stones). We bought snake toys and dreamcatchers and ate cactus candy like good tourists. You can go into an old mine, too, but do I look crazy to you? I read Hunger Games. I know what happens in mines.

The day that Olive was looking forward to the most, though, was the day we went horseback riding at the Spur Cross Ranch. My husband declined to ride, so Olive, my mother-in-law, and I took an hour ride though the desert. Olive is horse obsessed from watching The Saddle Club on Netflix, so the moment she was in the saddle she looked like a confident, experienced rider. After my initial terror over being on an animal so large, I settled in a bit and took in the stunning mountain scenery (while keeping one eye out for rattlesnakes).

The rest of our trip was spent in the pool, so it’s basically kid paradise. We’re looking forward to our next trip out when we hope to make it up to the Grand Canyon.