How to use this Page

Thank you, interwebs! And hat tip to my pal, the brilliant Jen Sattler, who tirelessly hunts this stuff down to bring it to the attention-deficit masses.

As it happens, tooth-brushing has figured large in my ouvre.

There’s this, from Wake Me In Spring:

Illustration by Jeffrey Scherer.

And this, from A Pirate’s Guide to First Grade:

Illustration by Greg Ruth.

Yikes, I feel a trilogy coming on.

So, yes, obviously, I have some dental issues. Carry on!

In this bunny eat bunny world, we’ve seen celebrity authors come and go. Mostly come, in droves, especially after Harry Potter put a spotlight on the profit potential of the children’s book biz. Ca-ching.

Everybody’s making millions!

For many of us non-celebrity authors and illustrators, dressed in our dreary clothes, clutching our cold coffee cups, it’s hard not to be a little, urm, disgusted at times. The crappy book by the “star” that gets a ridiculous amount of undeserved attention.

But that’s life, so we deal with it, and try to keep our petty thoughts to ourselves.

However, I hasten to add: not all celebrity books suck. Jamie Lee Curtis wrote some good ones, as I recall. Fred Gwynne — Herman Munster! — made a sincere  effort to create singular children’s books. By that I mean, my sense is that they actually worked on the books, actually respected the idea of a children’s book, and got into it for the “right reasons,” however we might differ in defining what those reasons are. It wasn’t just a way to cash in on something.

Anyway, this fresh, new effort by B.J. Novak is brilliant. Yes, absolutely, he came up with a clever idea. A great idea. But then he pulled it off over the course of an entire book. That’s not at all easy. And it’s beautifully published, too. Great job, all around.

Kids today, they sure do love the meta.

Enjoy this book with no pictures, folks. Go ahead, stomp on that link, surrender to the video. It makes me wish that I had a room full of kids to read this one too.

On Monday, I appeared on a local morning televison show in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Click here to see me in all my telegenic glory.

I’m posting this, just barely, from the antiquated computer in my hotel in downtown Grand Rapids, birthplace of Amway and President Gerald Ford, so you’re not going to get anything fancy in this post.

I should also mention . . . it took me three days in this hotel until I finally turned the right way after getting off the elevator. It was a small but satisfying victory. Life is good.

This is one of those amazing viral clips that everybody on the planet absolutely has to see. I assume that some of you saw it already. For those that haven’t, you can thank me later.

Basically: An elderly couple tries to figure out how this crazy thingamawhoosie works, and in the process accidentally record themselves. They make goofy faces, joke around, burp, suck like the dickens on hard candy, and somehow show us exactly what enduring love looks like. These two sweeties, together.

Really, it’s one of the most beautiful things I’ve seen. I get a little weepy watching it. The two of them together makes you want to be old and in love. It makes you want to goof around and sing and casually compliment someone you love. It makes you want your marriage to last — for this, for moments exactly like this. Thank you, internet!

Hat tip to Eliot Glazer of The Best Week Ever (see blogroll, right). This is a guy, Glazer, who is more than just your typical snark on the web (not that there’s anything wrong with snark, exactly, except that it tends to wear on you after a while). Glazer’s got real heart, soul, character . . . as evidenced by his must-see site, My Parents Were Awesome.

Share it with someone today.

Ah, the viral video. This one has been around for a few days, and I hadn’t clicked on it, because, obviously, I can’t click on everything. But it kept showing up, time and again, and finally I thought, okay . . . and clicked away. Glad I did. It’s sort of a small miracle, magical, wondrous.

If you haven’t seen this yet, trust me and give it a try.

Yo Yo Ma and Lil Buck, together for the very first time. I can’t wait to show this to Maggie.

“Could I use butter and cheese and eggs in my cooking without going down some kind of hippie shame spiral? Yes. Of course I could.” — cookbook author, Gwyneth Paltrow

-

Folks, I’m fresh back from a pretty great trip visiting schools on Long Island and Irvington, NY.  So here’s a quick one, too good not to share.

I mean to say: Nice to be home. And, oh yes, I’m always up for a satiric, dramatic reading of any too-serious text. While Kristen Wiig’s take on the poetry of Suzanne Somers remains a personal favorite, here’s a recent performance by Robert Acquire reading from Gwyneth Paltrow’s autobiographical cookbook stew, My Father’s Daughter. Enjoy!

You need to stay to the end for this to make its full impact, and I strongly recommend that you do.

The video was produced by Mama Hope:

Mama Hope is a non-profit organization focused on building self-sufficient communities in Sub-Saharan Africa.Mama Hope partners with Community Based Organizations and invests in high impact, cost effective projects, that meet their fundamental needs for food, water, education and health care. Mama Hope’s successful projects to date have directly benefited over 55,000 people.

You can learn more about Mama Hope’s “Stop the Pity, Unlock the Potential” Campaign by clicking here.

As a personal comment, I believe this video makes a point about all boy stereotypes. Forget, for a moment, that Alex is an African boy in Tanzania. In many respects, he can be any boy, head filled with action movies and explosions and whatnot. But like any boy, there’s more. He’s also charming, also hilarious, also bright, also curious, also hopeful, etc. And those whole qualities should be reflected in the range of books to which they are exposed.

This is really sweet in an honest, unaffected, natural way — and that’s why you’ll love it.

Click here for an article about the young father, Jorge Narvaez, age 24, and his daughters. Said Narvaez, “Every moment I have with them is special. It just happens that I put this one on YouTube and it blew up.”

As I type, the clip nears 6,000,000 total views.