Sunday, July 16, 2006

Odd Children's Books

One of the fun things about having little kids is that they don't know what's cool or hip, they just like what they like. Which is cool because I get a kick out of buying completely outdated kids books at yard sales and on E*bay. Before you pass judgment on me let me also point out they we have tons of "real" literature in our library: Dr. Seuss, GOODNIGHT MOON, THE LITTLE ENGINE THAT COULD...we've got all that stuff too. And I make sure to balance the licensed character books with the classic kids-lit stuff. But right now Elias is loving PAC-MAN AND THE GHOST DIGGERS, a little beauty from 1982 that I picked up on E*bay. Elias got all excited about Pac-Man when he saw me playing a few games on GameCube. He laughs uncontrollably everytime Pac-Man gets eaten by a ghost and makes the little "bloop-bloop" sound. Then I made things worse by showing him some of the old Pac-Man cartoon (on a DVD I also got from E*bay). Obviously he was very excited when this book came in the mail the other day. It quickly rose to the top of the "most read" list.
So here's a couple of other silly books I've acquired over the years. I saw Donny and Marie: The Top Secret Project online and knew instantly that Elias needed that in his library. Don't ask me why I was looking at Donny and Marie stuff on E*bay or I'll give away what the top secret project is. I'll give you a hint: It's a robot that cleans Donny's room! And who can forget the great old show PINK PANTHER AND SONS!?! The great thing about Little Golden Books is that they are always there to catch a little pop culture memory and immortalize it in book form.
THE PINK PANTHER AND THE FANCY PARTY is actually the second Pink Panther book we have. I still have a copy of THE PINK PANTHER AND THE HAUNTED HOUSE from my childhood that I read to Elias at Halloween time. When we were still reading it everynight at Thanksgiving time, I tracked down another P.P. title that also does the trick. This Mickey Mouse book might not seem to out of the ordinary, but it's actually based on the short-lived Mickey Mouse Club of the mid 70's. THE MOUSEKETTERS TRAIN RIDE features all the forgotten Mouseketters in their day-glow disco uniforms with bellbottoms. Elias doesn't care...Mickey Mouse and trains equals a good read in his world!
Here's two more that I wanted to throw in. I haven't actually read either of these to Elias yet, but some day. If you're not familiar with ACE VENTURA PET DETECTIVE, a major plot point in the movie is that the female police chief is actually a man. It's funny how they sort of gloss over that fact in this kiddie adaptation!

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