KidCrunch

Smart kids love solving the mysteries presented in the Encyclopedia Brown series of books by author Donald J. Sobol.

As a parent, I like Encyclopedia Brown books because they encourage kids to read carefully and to notice and remember the details of what they are reading.  I also like that our hero, Leroy “Encyclopedia” Brown, is celebrated for being smart.  He is nicknamed “Encyclopedia” because his brain is filled with knowledge gained by reading a lot of books.

Encyclopedia Brown is a super-smart ten year old detective.  He lives with his parents in the fictional town of Idaville where his father is the local police chief.  Each Encyclopedia Brown book is a collection of short mystery stories solved by Encyclopedia Brown (often with the help of his partner Sally Kimball) by finding a mistake or inconsistency in a suspect’s story.  The fun of reading Encyclopedia Brown books is trying to solve each mystery without peeking at the solutions in the back of the book.

Following are a list of the books in the Encyclopedia Brown series in order of first publication:

• Encyclopedia Brown, Boy Detective (1963)
• Encyclopedia Brown Strikes Again (1965)
• Encyclopedia Brown Finds the Clues (1966)
• Encyclopedia Brown Gets His Man (1967)
• Encyclopedia Brown Solves Them All (1968)
• Encyclopedia Brown Keeps the Peace (1969)
• Encyclopedia Brown Saves the Day (1970)
• Encyclopedia Brown Tracks Them Down (1971)
• Encyclopedia Brown Shows The Way (1972)
• Encyclopedia Brown Takes the Case (1973)
• Encyclopedia Brown Lends a Hand (1974)
• Encyclopedia Brown and the Case of the Dead Eagles (1975)
• Encyclopedia Brown and the Case of the Midnight Visitor (1977)
• Encyclopedia Brown Carries On (1980)
• Encyclopedia Brown Sets the Pace (1981)
• Encyclopedia Brown Takes the Cake (1982)
• Encyclopedia Brown and the Case of the Mysterious Handprints (1985) 
• Encyclopedia Brown and the Case of the Treasure Hunt (1988)  
• Encyclopedia Brown and the Case of the Disgusting Sneakers (1990)
• Encyclopedia Brown and the Case of the Two Spies (1995)
• Encyclopedia Brown and the Case of Pablo’s Nose (1996)
• Encyclopedia Brown and the Case of the Sleeping Dog (1998)
• Encyclopedia Brown and the Case of the Slippery Salamander (2000) 
• Encyclopedia Brown and the Case of the Jumping Frogs (2003)
• Encyclopedia Brown Cracks the Case (2007)
• Encyclopedia Brown, Super Sleuth (2009)

I loved reading Encyclopedia Brown books as a kid.  I read one after another and vividly recall my disappointed when I ran out of new ones to read.  I moved on to read The Great Brain books by John D. Fitzgerald - which had a similarly brainy main character and were good, but not quite the same.

Buy Encyclopedia Brown books through Amazon at the KidCrunch Store.

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The past few weeks have been difficult for many families in Georgia as flood waters have devastated homes and tragically taken lives.  As my kids watch the evening news, it is unnerving for them to see disaster hit so close to home.  I can only imagine how painful and scary it must be to those kids directly affected by this and other life-changing disasters.

At the same time, all across the nation, there are families experiencing financial crisis.  To a child, losing a home to foreclosure is not much different from losing a home to flood or fire.  When kids hear of neighbors and other families losing their homes, they must wonder if it could happen to them.  And they are probably worried.

All of this brought to mind a book I recently read with my daughter called A Chair for My Mother by Vera B. Williams.  It is not a new book–it was published in 1982–but it is new to us.  Our neighbor, whose daughters are now grown, recently gave it to us along with a few piles of wonderful books that belonged to her daughters.  A Chair for My Mother is an excellent book for difficult times because it is a story of a devastating loss and a family that works hard to recover.

A Chair for My Mother is the story of a young girl named Rosa and her mother who are dutifully saving their money to buy a chair.  Their savings–which accumulates as coins in a big glass jar–includes tips from her mother’s job as a waitress and Rosa’s occasional job helping out at the diner.  Rosa and Mama are saving for a chair because their old chairs, and their sofa, and everything else they owned burned in a big fire (”that wasn’t such a long time ago.”)  Rosa’s Grandma and her cat were safe, but everything else was turned to charcoal and ashes.

In A Chair for My Mother, we see the devastation, but we also see how Rosa and her family get through it.  Rosa’s aunt and uncle take them in and other relatives and friends pitch in to help, bringing them food, household items and some furniture.  After a year of hard work and saving, Rosa and Mama have saved enough money in their jar to buy the chair of their dreams.  The book ends wonderfully with Rosa and Mama happily cuddled in their new chair.

A Chair for My Mother is an excellent book for difficult times.  It does not hide the fact that bad things sometimes happen, but it also shows how families and friends can help each other to recover.  The book also offers some great lessons about goal setting, hard work and saving money.

A Chair for my Mother is a Caldecott Honor Book, an ALA Notable Book, a Reading Rainbow Feature Selection and won the Boston Globe/Horn Book Award for Illustration.

Buy A Chair for My Mother and other great kids books through Amazon at the KidCrunch Store.

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With apologies to 30 Rock, The Office and other Emmy-nominated comedies, I think the funniest show on television might be SpongeBob SquarePants.

So, while there were a handful of good kids DVDs released this week, for me, it’s all about SpongeBob.  The newly released DVD collection  SpongeBob SquarePants: The First 100 Episodes includes every episode from the first five seasons on 14 discs.  That is just awesome. 

Although it is not educational programming, there is something to be learned from SpongeBob.  The show offers an occasional tidbit of nautical terminology and sometimes randomly delves into the obscure - like when the staff of the Krusty Krab goes on strike carrying signs made from “picket” fences.  I turned that into a teachable moment.

Also, try this with your kids - ask them to tell you about their favorite SpongeBob episodes.  They may not tell you a lot about the books they read or what they learn at school, but even the most reticent of kids will go on and on and on about SpongeBob.  Everyone has a favorite SpongeBob episode.  My favorite is when SpongeBob and Patrick become hysterical when their new friend “Wormy” is consumed, apparently, by a very scary butterfly.  Eric Carle’s The Very Hungry Caterpillar ain’t got nothin’ on The Wormy Episode, a SpongeBob classic.

For more fun and enrichment, ask your kids to name a family member or close friend who reminds them of a SpongeBob character.  All of my kids see themselves as SpongeBob and see their best friend in Patrick.  Our dog Nellie is everyone’s choice to be SpongeBob’s pet Gary the Snail.  And, if you know my kids, you can guess who reminds us of Squidward and who is so Mr. Krabs.

Your kids will love SpongeBob SquarePants: The First 100 Episodes and, if they are looking for entertainment outside of Bikini Bottom, they may also enjoy these these new kids DVDs:

• Jonas: Rockin’ the House (Volume 1)
• Scooby-Doo: The Mystery Begins
• Wizards on Deck with Hannah Montana
• Wallace and Gromit: A Matter of Loaf or Death and
• Wallace and Gromit: The Complete Collection

Buy these new kids DVDs through Amazon at the KidCrunch Store and remember to ask your kids about their favorite SpongeBob episode.

This kids book list includes books for preschoolers first learning about shapes, plus books for early elementary students learning geometric concepts.

• A Cloak for the Dreamer by Aileen Friedman
• Architecture, Shape by Michael Crosbie and Steve Rosenthal
• Baby Einstein: See and Spy Shapes by Julie Aigner-Clark
• Block City by Robert Louis Stevenson
• Cubes, Cones, Cylinders & Spheres by Tana Hoban
• Eight Hands Round: A Patchwork Alphabet by Ann Whitford Paul
• I Spy Shapes in Art by Lucy Micklethwait
• Mouse Shapes by Ellen Stoll Walsh
• Museum Shapes by the Metropolitan Museum of Art
• Shape Up! by David A. Adler
• Shapes, Shapes, Shapes by Tana Hoban
• The Greedy Triangle by Marilyn Burns
• The Shape of Me and Other Things by Dr. Seuss
• The Shapes Game by Paul Rogers

• When a Line Bends…A Shape Begins by Rhonda Gowler Greene

Buy these books about shapes and other great kids books through Amazon at the KidCrunch Store.

You may also like the following educational products that teach shapes and build geometry skills.

• Color and Shapes Bingo game by Trend Enterprises
• Shapes Up! game by Educational Insights
• Geometric Shapes and Activities at Learning Things

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The Sony Pictures animated 3-D movie Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs opens today.  Rated PG for brief mild language, the movie is based on the 1978 children’s book of the same name written by Judi Barrett and illustrated by Ron Barrett. 

In this action-filled comedy, young scientist Flint Lockwood (voiced by SNL’s Bill Hader) invents a machine that turns water into food - that rains down to earth in dangerous proportions.  This phenomenon attracts coverage from perky TV weathergirl Sam Sparks (Anna Faris of the Scary Movie series.)  Other famous voices include James Caan (as Flint’s father, Tim), Andy Samberg (as bully “Baby” Brent), Mr. T (as local cop Earl Devereaux) and Neil Patrick Harris (as Flint’s scene-stealing monkey.)

The critics seem to like it:

Eye-popping and mouth-watering in one, Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs spins a 30-page children’s book into a 90-minute all-you-can-laugh buffet, expanding the premise of a town where it rains ketchup and hot dogs to disaster-movie proportions.  Variety|Peter Debruge

Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs is a surprisingly savory treat, though it doesn’t bear much resemblance to the charming classic children’s book on which it’s based. USA Today|Claudia Puig

I’ve seen a lot of 3-D recently, and in terms of technical quality, this is the best.  Chicago Sun-Times|Roger Ebert 

The movie’s humor targets both kids and grown-ups with equal success, but, even with the presence of a mustache-fixated monkey, the main attraction here is the movie’s vibrant 3-D animation and its perfect storm of foodie-friendly sight gags. Los Angeles Times|Glenn Whipp

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