Garden Plate | $14.95

Do you have a fussy eater on your hands?  Make meals fun again with the Garden Plate from the NeatoShop! This fabulous plate comes complete with ramps and breaks to separate food into groupings. And it’s decorated with tiny garden plants! It is specially designed to work with the Garden Utensil Set (sold separately). Dishwasher and microwave safe. Playing with your food just got a whole lot more fun! The Garden Plate is part of a wide selection of mealtime fun products in the NeatoShop.

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You probably already know that China has a one child per couple policy, but you might not know how it is enforced or who is granted exceptions to the rule. The answers to these questions can be found over at Mental Floss and they are simply fascinating.

Provincial governments are responsible for enforcing the policy and do so through a mix of rewards and punishments doled out by local officials. In most provinces, having a an extra child gets you a fine, the amount of which varies across provinces. In some places, the fine is a set amount (usually in the thousands of dollars), and in others it’s based on a percentage of the violator’s annual income. In some provinces, policy violators can also have their property and/or belongings confiscated and lose their jobs.

Who knew they even can fire you from your job for having an extra baby?

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In English, that’s Who’s Coming? which was a kinderbuch (children’s book) from 1910 showing all kinds of people who come to the house. The illustrations are by Julie Conz, and you can see eleven of them at BibliOdyssey. Not only are they beautiful, but they also highlight how differently goods and services were provided 100 years ago. Link

Once upon a more staid time, the purpose of children’s books was to model good behavior. They were meant to edify and to encourage young readers to be what parents wanted them to be, and the children in their pages were well behaved, properly attired and devoid of tears. Children’s literature was not supposed to shine a light on the way children actually were, or delight in the slovenly, self-interested and disobedient side of their natures.

Seuss, Sendak and Silverstein ignored these rules. They brought a shock of subversion to the genre — defying the notion that children’s books shouldn’t be scary, silly or sophisticated. Rather than reprimand the wayward listener, their books encouraged bad (or perhaps just human) behavior. Not surprisingly, Silverstein and Sendak shared the same longtime editor, Ursula Nordstrom of Harper & Row, a woman who once declared it her mission to publish “good books for bad children.”

Read more about it at the New York Times. Link -via @Marilyn_Res

Tomorrow’s Pioneers

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If you love American television programming, but wish you could use it to teach your children the perils of the evil Western fascist dogs, then Tomorrow’s Pioneers might just be your new favorite kids show. The show features a female host and a few costumed characters, including a knock-off Mickey Mouse character, entertaining children with ideas of antisemitism, anti-Americanism and Islamic extremism. As if that weren’t enough, many of the costumed characters are martyred, most notably, the Mickey Mouse character is killed by an Israeli interrogator, providing youngsters with a deep, long-standing hatred for Palestine’s sworn enemies. Nothing like getting your propaganda into your kid’s minds before they’re too old to think for themselves.

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Boohbah

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If you thought the Teletubbies were strange, just wait until you get a load of this show that their creator released after it. According to their website, the Boohbahs are “five magical atoms of power” who live in a Boohball, which is a glowing white ball that can travel from country to country whenever a child calls it. The Boohball features a spinning recharging pod where the Boohbahs can recharge their energy through the laughter of children they play with. Since this show was made for kids between the ages of three and five, I’m going to go ahead and say this show is actually just supposed to entertain kids with bright colors and weird effects –just like the Teletubbies, since all of that background story is way beyond the scope of any kids in their demographic.

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Oobi

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Technically these are puppets, but really, it’s a show about hands wearing eyes and occasionally tufts of hair. The hands don’t ever use complete sentences, but just enough words to express what they need to make themselves understood. While I could see how that idea could be helpful for toddlers who have the same language barriers, seeing creepy hand puppets holding things in their mouth and whispering “guess” is surprisingly unsettling for most adults –myself included.

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Ludwig

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This one might be utterly bizarre like many of the other shows on this list, but at least it’s incredibly adorable. The basic story involves Ludwig, a forest-dwelling crystal that plays music and will periodically sprout arms, legs or gadgets out of his sides as needed, interacting with the other animals in the forest as a narrator (the only person who talks in the series) describes the action. After seeing some of the other shows here, I think we can all agree that there are a lot worse things your kids could be watching.

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LazyTown

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This Icelandic show features a lethargic town that is made entirely of puppets who love junk food and video games. The only exceptions are the villain, Robbie Rotten, the mayor’s niece who is new to town, Stephanie, and a fitness superhero who lives in a blimp above town, Sporticus. Stephanie and Sporticus make it their personal mission to inspire the residents to become more active and healthy, but lazy and anti-social Robbie Rotten wants to put a stop to their actions and fill the town with more junk food. Of course, the irony is that in trying to stop the heroes of the show, Robbie Rotten spends more energy than any other character on the program.

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Yo Gabba Gabba!

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You’ve probably already seen this show, or at least some of its characters, but if you’ve never paid attention to the program, you might not think a few dancing singing monsters are really all that weird for a typical kid’s show. But what makes this program particularly bizarre are some of the lessons they try to teach kids through song, for example, “Don’t Bite Your Friends,” and “All My Friends Are Insects.” Of course, with guest stars like Sarah Silverman, Jack Black, Weezer, and Elija Wood, it’s not entirely surprising that this show has enough quirky humor needed to appeal to adult viewers.

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Have any of you looked at shows you watched as a kid, or shows your kids watch now, and found yourself asking WTF? If so, share your favorite weird kid shows in the comments.

Costume designer Heather MacCrimmon made dresses designed by three little girls “too young to be influenced by commercial fashion.” What resulted is three outfits that any 7-year-old girl would be proud to wear. Link -via Metafilter

Link via Laughing Squid

If you want to make an attention-grabbing ad, you have to do something really outrageous these days. That being said, these 10 ads on Oddee -all featuring kids- are utterly disturbing.

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Do you or someone you know have an addiction to Warcrack? Are you spending so much time farming and battling monsters that your life is passing you by? Well, at least you haven’t sold your kids to pay for your MMO habits! One couple in China, however, have sold three of their children just to pay for their online gaming obsession, and they see nothing wrong with what they have done. They are so honest, in fact, that they admit to not wanting to raise the children, and that their intention from day one was to have children in order to sell them for cold hard cash. Thankfully the two are now in custody, and here’s hoping that the kids don’t follow in their parents footsteps and end up in a gold farming camp!

Link Image via Image*After

There are plenty of online gaming sites for youngsters, but most parents would rather have their kids get off the computer and use their brains for more creative fronts. Tinkatolli wants to change all that by blending an online realm for children with creativity and real life projects. The result should keep kids entertained, mentally stimulated and improve their tinkering skills. I don’t know about you guys, but I can’t wait for the site to go public.

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From an early age most boys learn that they are “should” play with trucks, love blue and play baseball. Girls are taught to play with dolls, love pink and play house. However more and more parents are educators are experimenting with raising children “genderless” such as the Canadian parents who would not reveal the gender of their baby. Now this preschool in Sweden  leaves gender roles up to the kids. What do you think? Should children be raised “genderless?”

At the “Egalia” preschool, staff avoid using words like “him” or “her” and address the 33 kids as “friends” rather than girls and boys.

From the color and placement of toys to the choice of books, every detail has been carefully planned to make sure the children don’t fall into gender stereotypes.

“Society expects girls to be girlie, nice and pretty and boys to be manly, rough and outgoing,” says Jenny Johnsson, a 31-year-old teacher. “Egalia gives them a fantastic opportunity to be whoever they want to be.”

The taxpayer-funded preschool which opened last year in the liberal Sodermalm district of Stockholm for kids aged 1 to 6 is among the most radical examples of Sweden’s efforts to engineer equality between the sexes from childhood onward.

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This Flickr gallery is titled “You spin me right ‘round, baby.” It’s a collection of 16 faces of children as they are being spun around by an adult. These pictures aren’t easy to shoot, but the joy in the kids’ faces makes it very much worthwhile. Many different photographers are represented here. Link -via Metafilter

(Image credit: Flickr member Nathan Jones)

Only recently have pit bulls gained a reputation for being dangerous dogs, mainly due to their popularity among those who breed and train dogs to be overly aggressive -or to just look scary. For generations, the breed was known as “The Nanny Dog.” See a collection of children’s pictures taken with their beloved and loyal dogs, all pit bulls, at What I Saw Today. Link -via the Presurfer

Since then, each has been denied parole dozens of times. Supporters say their continued imprisonment makes a mockery of the idea of rehabilitation. Minier, now a retired judge, favors parole for all three kidnappers.

“Quite frankly, I am simply amazed that Richard Schoenfeld, given his record as a model prisoner, was not paroled years ago,” Minier wrote the parole board in 2006.

At the Feb. 23 news conference in San Francisco, Dale Fore, one of the lead investigators in the case, said: “They were just dumb rich kids, and they paid a hell of a price for what they did.”

After retiring from the Madera County Sheriff’s Department, Fore worked as a private investigator for the Woods family’s attorneys, tracking down kidnapping victims to see if any would write letters of support for parole. None has.

“I might not be the most popular guy when I get back home,” Fore said. “But right is right. How much time do you want out of these guys?”

If you ask the people of Chowchilla, the answer is life without parole. On one hand, the crime as planned was horrific. On the other hand, no one was seriously hurt in the end. Many people convicted of murder receive lighter sentences. On the other hand, this crime could have ended as a mass murder. What do you think? Link -via Metafilter

(Image credit: Associated Press)

Photographer Horace Warner took hundreds of pictures of street urchins in the East End neighborhood of Spitalfields in 1912. At the time, it was one of London’s harshest slum areas, but has been gentrified in the past few decades. These photographs are a peek into the world that inspired Charles Dickens.

Little is known of Horace Warner and nothing is known of his relationship to the nippers. Only thirty of these pictures survive, out of two hundred and forty that he took, tantalising the viewer today as rare visions of the lost tribe of Spitalfields Nippers. They make look like paupers, and the original usage of them to accompany the annual reports of the charitable Bedford Institute, Quaker St, Spitalfields, may have been as illustrations of poverty – but that is not the sum total of these beguiling photographs, because they exist as spirited images of something much more subtle and compelling, the elusive drama of childhood itself.

Link -via Nag on the Lake

1. Toy Tazer

There are toy guns, toy bow and arrow sets, toy swords and more, but somehow a toy tazer still seems to take things a touch too far –particularly considering the “Police Electric Baton Shock” actually gives out real shocks.  On the upside, it’s only $3.50, so it’s much cheaper than most kid’s toys.

2. The Kaba Kick

Russian Roulette is a ton of fun, but it’s unfortunately completely permanent. If you want to practice the game without those deadly consequences, then you’d better go ahead and start out with the Kaba Kick and the more gentle pink hippo kicks that replace bullets.

3. Cleaning Trolley

It’s totally normal for kids to pretend to do grown up jobs, after all, some kids play house, some play doctor, some play superhero and some play with chemistry sets, but who wants to be a janitor? Maybe it’s just me, but it seems like a better idea to push your kids towards an intellectual pursuit than a job in the cleaning industry.

4. Playmobile Security Checkpoint

This just might be one of the most popular terrible toys of all time. In fact, it has become sort of a strange collector’s item, accounting for the fact that it costs an incredible $175 on Amazon right now. That’s a pretty big rip off considering how inaccurate the toy is, I mean you can’t even take off the passenger’s shoes before they go through the checkpoint.

5. Peeing Dog

Maybe it’s just me, but part of the point of giving your kids a dog toy is to skirt the responsibility issues that come with giving your kids a real dog. Unfortunately, giving your little ones a dog toy that still pees in the house seems to negate that benefit. But hey, at least he looks cute.

6. Gelli Baff

I have to admit, I’m torn on this one. On the one hand, the gel turns the water into a nasty and disgusting goop and who wants their kids to bathe in something like that? On the other hand, anything that makes your kids want to take a bath is a good thing, right?

7. Pregnant Midge

Originally there was just Barbie, but then she met Ken and started making friends. Eventually Midge hit the scene, but once she got pregnant with Nicky, she just didn’t quite fit in with the partying Barbie crowd. These days, she’s mostly seen at home watching her three children and hoping some giant monster doesn’t come by to rip open her stomach to extract her newest baby.

8. Breast Feeding Doll

There’s nothing wrong with a little girl wanting to play mommy to her dolls, but when she starts breast feeding the toy, that’s when it becomes a problem. If you’re one of those handful of weirdos that thinks a little girl should know how to properly breastfeed an infant though, then this Bebe Gloton doll is just what you need to help make sure your little angel is 100% ready to have a little angel of her own.

9. The Punisher Shape Shifter

While in the box, this toy looks innocent enough, but this toy design just might be one of the most absurd I’ve ever seen. How could this toy actually get through design, research and marketing without anyone realizing just how ridiculous it is to have a giant “power pistol” coming from The Punisher’s groin or butt that shoots when you pull back on the sleeve.

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10. Buzz Lightyear Sippy Cup

There’s nothing outright wrong with the idea of creating a Buzz Lightyear sippy cup…that is, until you put the straw right where his groin should be. To be fair, if you rotate the lid around it’s not so dirty, but the fact that you can even set it up to look like this is still pretty moronic.

11. Harry Potter Vibrating Broom

Again, this toy doesn’t seem like a bad idea until you give a young girl something to stick between her legs –and then make that thing vibrate. It wasn’t long before sex shops and parents alike took notice and Amazon quickly pulled the item from their inventory. But before that happened, the site had some great reviews like “When my 12 year old daughter asked for this for her birthday, I kind of wondered if she was too old for it, but she seems to LOVE it. Her friends love it too! They play for hours in her bedroom with this great toy. They really seem to like the special effects it offers (the sound effects and vibrating). My oldest daughter (17) really likes it too! I recommend this for all children.”

What are your favorite terrible kid’s toys? Please share in the comments.

Image via Thomas Hawk [Flickr]

A Last Minute Addition

One of Disney’s most iconic attractions actually started out as a last minute attraction to the 1964 New York World’s Fair. The team was already working on a number of exhibits for the fair, including the Magic Skyway, Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln and The Carousel of Progress, when the program manager for the fair reached out to Disney and asked him to creat a tribute to UNICEF.

Always up to a challenge, Disney agreed and asked Mary Blair, Marc Davis, Alice Davis and Gregory S. Marinello for help. Mary gave the ride its overall feel and whimsy and inspired the general character design. Marc designed the scenes and the specific characters, while his wife, Alice, designed the costumes. Gregory designed the clock face on the exterior. Walt oversaw the design of the doll’s faces, which were all made to be exactly the same in order to promote the concept that all around the world children are all the same deep down.

Image via Andy Castro [Flickr]

The original nickname of the ride was “the happiest cruise that ever sailed” and the ride was intended to showcase the national anthem for each country portrayed. Unfortunately, this ended up sounding like a terrible mess in practice, so he hired the Sherman Brothers, the same gents who wrote the theme song for the Tiki Room, to create a song that would unify the ride’s characters together. It was only after the boys came back with their masterpiece that the ride got its name.

To really bring a spirit of unity, children from all over the world were hired to sing the song for the official recording. A London church choir, a Roman school chorus and Mexican tv performers are some of the many voices heard on the soundtrack. In a striking gesture, Disney opted not to copyright the song at the urging of UNICEF and he declared that he gave it to the children of the world as a gift. It remains the only Disney creation to never be copyrighted.

A Smashing Success

At the fair, the ride was a huge hit and over 10 million ride tickets were sold in the two years the fair operated, resulting in a huge chunk of proceeds given to UNICEF. While the ride constantly had visitors, the mechanics of the boat ride allowed for lines to move quickly. The amazing capacity prompted the company to change their plans for the upcoming Pirates of the Caribbean attraction from a walk-through exhibit to a boat ride.

As soon as the World’s Fair was over, the ride was installed in the Anaheim park, opening for the first time on May 28, 1966. The attraction was installed rather quickly since it mostly just had to be moved from the World’s Fair back to Disneyland and put back together (all the original pieces were used in the current version). Still, some additions were needed to ensure it could survive as a permanent ride instead of a quick touring ride.

To commemorate the ride’s official opening, Disney invited children from around the world to attend the grand opening. He asked each of them to bring a container of water from a lake, ocean or river in their native country. Before the ride opened, the containers were emptied into the water of the attraction.

Each cruise lasts about 15 minutes and features over 300 costumed dolls singing the official song. Because there are now five Disneyland parks, all of which play the song on a constant loop, the song is estimated to be the most performed musical composition in the world. It’s estimated that more than 256 million people have ridden the cruse, which means it might just hold the record for “song to get stuck in the most people’s heads.”

Changing A Classic

Image via Armadillo444 [Flickr]

As you may have noticed through the Neatorama Facts series about Disneyland, the park always goes through renovations and no matter how minor they are, fans always cry foul. It’s A Small World went through a very serious renovation in 2009 and the reviews seem to be divided. While some of the changes were minor, like the enhancements to the water jets that push the boats through the ride and the replacement of the old boats, the big difference was the addition of over 30 Disney characters into the classic attraction’s scenes. The renovation also included a new “America” area, where there used to be a South American rain forest scene.

Personally, I find the added Disney characters to be subtle and their inclusion creates a fun game for guests to find all of the new characters. Here’s a video of the change for comparison:

Holiday Inspirations

It’s A Small World joins the Haunted Mansion in being one of the only rides to change on the inside and outside during the Christmas season. During this time of year, the children sing classic holiday songs, which are seamlessly blended in with the Small World theme. Each region is also adorned with the area’s traditional holiday décor. On the outside, the façade is just as impressive, adorned with tons of glowing Christmas lights.

Image via Andy Castro [Flickr]

A Few More Fun Tidbits:

• The Sherman Brothers claim to have written the song in response to the fear caused by the Cuban Missile Crisis, hence some of the less cuddly lyrics like “it’s a world of laughter, a world of tears, its a world of hopes, its a world of fears.”
• In reference to the song’s lyrics, which say, “there is just one moon and one golden sun,” there is at least one sun and one moon in every room of the ride.
• The official name of the waterway you travel down is the “Seven Seas Canal.”
• The golden accents on the building are actually 24-karat gold.

Do you guys like It’s A Small World, or does the catchy song drive you bananas? For those of you who are fans, what do you think about the Disney character additions? Are they a fun little enhancement or a distraction?

Sources: Wikipedia, National Institute For Health, Mental Floss, Disneyland and Little-Known Facts About Well-Known Places

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Disneyland fans! See more Neatorama Facts:

Neatorama Facts: Haunted Mansion

Neatorama Facts: Sleeping Beauty Castle

Neatorama Facts: Pirates of the Caribbean

Neatorama Facts: The Jungle Cruise

Neatorama Facts: Space Mountain

Neatorama Facts: The Enchanted Tiki Room

Neatorama Facts: Christmas at Disneyland

The Gifford Children’s Choir of Racine, Wisconsin perform Trolololo (previously at Neatorama) as a Christmas gift to the people on the internet! Link -via The Daily What

Japanese kids bravely fight a zombie that invaded their home. Watch the subtitles for some adorable dialog. Give your opinion: child abuse, character building, or just plain fun? -via Metafilter

Jason Lee is a wedding photographer, but his really creative side comes out when he shoots his adorable daughters. You’ll find more pictures and an interview with Lee at My Modern Met. Link -via reddit

There is no reason to view the poor as stupid or in any way different from anyone else, says Daniel Nettle of the University of Newcastle in the UK. All of us are simply human beings, making the best of the hand life has dealt us. If we understand this, it won’t just change the way we view the lives of the poorest in society, it will also show how misguided many current efforts to tackle society’s problems are – and it will suggest better solutions.

Evolutionary theory predicts that if you are a mammal growing up in a harsh, unpredictable environment where you are susceptible to disease and might die young, then you should follow a "fast" reproductive strategy – grow up quickly, and have offspring early and close together so you can ensure leaving some viable progeny before you become ill or die. For a range of animal species there is evidence that this does happen. Now research suggests that humans are no exception.

Certainly the theory holds up in comparisons between people in rich and poor countries. Bobbi Low and her colleagues at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor compared information from nations across the world to see if the age at which women have children changes according to their life expectancy (Cross-Cultural Research, vol 42, p 201). "We found that the human data fit the general mammalian pattern," says Low. "The shorter life expectancy was, the earlier women had their first child."

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It’s time to celebrate the not-so-scary Mr. Scarry in honor of what would have been his ninety-first birthday this June 5.

Image via Amazon

The Great Teacher Was A Horrible Student

While most Richard Scarry books are incredibly educational for kids, he was a terrible student and hated school. He excelled at scaring the girls in his school in Boston and was permanently banned from the library after bringing in too many snakes to slither along the tables and bookshelves.

He received so many poor grades that he almost dropped out of school in junior high and ended up taking five years to finish high school after being held back due to excessive absences. During this period, many other children were dropping out of school to help keep their families afloat during the Depression, but Richard’s family owned a successful shop that helped keep them living comfortably despite the economic downturn.

Around this time, his artistic talents began blooming and on top of practicing his mother’s handwriting for excuse notes to get out of class, he also started finding himself quite able when it came to drawing the human form.

Unfortunately, his parents were far from excited when they learned about his new talents –as they made the discovery by finding his stack of charcoal drawings depicting nude girls. His dad asked him, after discovering an image of a beautiful woman with tassels on her breasts, “What’s going to become of you, Richard?” A born artist and trouble-maker, he already had a response ready, “if I’m going to be an artist, sir, I have to learn how to draw the human form.”

While his father desperately wanted him to go to an Ivy League school like Harvard, Richard’s terrible grades and bad attitude ensured that was little more than a pipe dream and he instead was sent off to a local business school where he again did miserably and he dropped out within his first year.

After long last, his father gave up hopes of having a child do anything more than be an artist and he finally sent the boy to the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, where he flourished until he joined the army to fight in World War II. Scarry never did obtain a college diploma.

Image via Gwen [Flickr]

Artistic Advances In The Army

When Richard first joined the army, he listed his occupation as artist, which caused them to put him in radio repair school. Angered at the prospect of more schooling, he bombed the entry test and earned the esteemed reputation of having the lowest score ever recorded on the test –a negative 13. He later joked, “My exam mark was minus 13, so they decided to make me a corporal.”

Because he did so badly, he was instead assigned to be a military art director and was instructed to tell the troops why they were fighting and to share news from home. To do this job, he paraphrased clips from Time magazine and illustrated them and then sent them off as fliers.

He impressed his superiors enough that they soon promoted him to be the editor and writer of Publications for the Information and Morale Services section of the Allied Force Headquarters. With his new position, he was given enough leisure time to visit Africa, Algiers, Italy and France, an experience that left him with a lifelong drive to travel.

When the war ended, Scarry’s job had provided him enough experience developing content for a publication with over one million readers every week and he was able to get great positions in the New York art world without ever having to work his way up.

Big Success In New York, New York

Immediately upon moving to New York he was given an illustrator job at Vogue, but he was fired three weeks later, when they claimed he just wasn’t right for the position. He was soon able to get a few positions at other magazines but really made a name for himself doing freelance children’s illustrations.

It wasn’t long before he submitted his impressive portfolio to the Artist and Writers Guild, a subsidiary in New York that was just about to start mass-producing a new line of children’s books that would sell for 25 cents each. He was immediately hired and started out doing artwork for other writers, including his future wife, Patricia Murphy, who he married in 1949.

By the early fifties, Scarry was inspired and experienced enough in children’s books that he decided to start writing his own titles. His first book, The Great Big Car and Truck Book, was published in 1951. It did moderately well and featured many of his interests, such as travel and technology, but it was most notable for being his only title to use humans instead of athropomorphized animals. His second book, Rabbit and His Friends, introduced his use of talking animals, but his true success didn’t take place until the 1963 title The Best Word Book Ever.

This groundbreaking work served as a sort of picture dictionary that was broken up by word type, rather than being organized alphabetically. This was also the first place he featured many of his famous anthropomorphic characters that would later be the backbone of his Big Busy World and Busytown.

Image via Senor Ryan [Flickr]

The Secret Behind Scarry Success

The reason the classic Scarry books have done so well to this day is because they are so complex, yet so easy to follow. Children love that they can flip through the pages before they can even read and make up stories about the characters. At the same time, there is so much going on in his pictures that they often re-read the books over and over to make sure they catch all the action on every page.

This seems to be what Scarry was going for. He once said, “I’m not interested in creating a book that is read once and then placed on the shelf and forgotten. I am very happy when people write that they have worn out my books, or that they are held together by Scotch tape. I consider that the ultimate compliment.”

That’s not all there is to like. When parents read the books to kids, they enjoy the fact that the questions proposed throughout the pages start getting the children thinking and talking, meaning Scarry’s books help educate youngsters on an array of levels that go far deeper than most children’s books.

Another positive aspect of the titles is his use of animals. While they are certainly cute, they also serve to be much more enjoyable and identifiable to children. One of the reasons his books have done so well throughout the world is the fact that animals do not have racial characteristics, which allow all children to connect with the little girl bunny or little boy cat. He explained “children can identify more closely with pictures of animals than they can with pictures of another child. They see an illustration of a blond girl or a dark-haired boy, who they know is somebody other than themselves, and competition creeps in. With imagination — and children all have marvelous imagination — they can easily identify with an anteater who is a painter or a goat who is an Indian.”

Images via Pinot & Dita and beccaplusmolly [Flickr]

Controversy Quickly Corrected

Of course, that’s not to say Richard’s work was always free from issues revolving around political correctness. While his Big, Busy World books were based around real observations he noticed while traveling, the post seventies world was far less accepting of a near-sighted panda from Hong Kong or Manuel of Mexico with a pot of beans on his head. As a result, he largely stopped writing these titles and Random House stopped distributing the titles.

As if that weren’t enough controversy, mothers soon started being offended by Scarry’s decidedly fifties roles of housewives taking care of the children while the husbands go off to work. Really though, Richard wasn’t sexist, he was just not with the times. As soon as he heard the complaints, he happily revised his images to show female farmers and police officers and men pushing strollers and cooking in the kitchen. If you’re interested, the differences between the versions are well documented in this Flickr set by user Kokogiak.

The Patented Scarry Work Process

While the artist originally started painting his works in full-color watercolors, his signature books are all done using a work process he perfected throughout the years. First he would sketch out his panels with pencil, then he would re-draw the finalized versions with blue pencil. Then he would color in all the red areas on every page, then blue, then yellow, etc. and at the end, he would draw in all the detail lines with a pen.

After he finished the works, he would tape on his narrative texts that quickly pecked out on a typewriter. Many of these contained spelling errors and other typos, but he left that to the editors to worry about. Despite his popularity, Richard was always an artist first and a writer a distant second.

While he always hated leaving white space and loved complicated machineries and cut-away diagrams, his early titles aren’t as loaded with these aspects. When things progressed on though, his titles were increasingly complex. By the time he completed his final work, Richard Scarry’s Biggest Word Book Ever, the sixty-six year old Scarry’s eyesight was failing miserably, but that didn’t stop him from finishing the artwork for the monstrous 15 3/4 x 24 inches book. It was so large that Random House had to charge $29 per copy, but it was so popular that the first printing sold out in no time despite the price.

Image via Rotten

A Family Affair

In their later years, Richard and his wife bought a chalet in Gstaad, Switzerland. Here he worked diligently on his books, sitting at his desk every day between 8 A.M. and 4 P.M. After his eyesight failed, he stopped working on his books, but he still lived happily with his wife until he passed away from a fatal heart attack on April 30, 1994.

These days, his son Richard Scarry Jr. carries on the tradition, writing and illustrating books under his father’s name and periodically under the name “Huck Scarry,” which he adapted from Huckle Cat, one of the most common characters in the Busytown world.

Image via JB Publishing

Sources: Ciao UK, Wikipedia, Barnes & Noble, Carnegie Museums, Kirjasto and Rotten

Why? Because there’s nothing that says "I Love You" like a fake chest knife wound and scary Halloween mask. Thanks for the psychologically scarring us for life, moms! Link

Lenore Skenazy, a mom and the author of Free-Range Kids has declared May 22nd – the weekend before Memorial Day – as the very first “Take Our Children to the Park… And Leave Them There Day.”

It is all part of Skenazy’s crusade to bring back common sense parenting to what are some very overprotective times. Her basic philosophy is that kids need to get out in the world, and that even though there might be some risk involved, the risk is small and well worth taking.

Most of us used to play outside in the park, without our parents, without cell phones, without Purell or bottled water and we survived! Thrived! We cherish the memories! And if you believe the million studies that I’m always publishing here, kids are healthier, happier and better-adjusted if they get to spend some time each day in “free play,” without adults hovering.

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From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by timcanny.

Previously at Neatorama: Would you let your 9-year-old ride the subway alone?

Check out some clever words to describe the way kids exasperate their parents. My kids have outgrown most of these phases, but I remember them well! Link

While her mother and three siblings were in another part of the house, the authorities said, Samantha got inside an unused crib that had no mattress or box spring. She placed a child’s belt around her neck and tied it to the upper railing of the crib, hanging herself. The first-grader died at a hospital after the family and paramedics tried to save her.

Dr. Clifford Nelson, the deputy state medical examiner, ruled the death a suicide, a conclusion police did not support.

“The disagreement is a little more philosophical than it is material to the case,” McMinnville police Capt. Dennis Marks said prior to the public records request. “It’s not that we disagree with the mechanics of what happened. It’s the finding that a 6-year-old could form that kind of intent.”

Nelson said it’s a disturbing case, but he couldn’t “fudge the facts to make people feel better.”

For now, her death is listed as the youngest suicide on record in Oregon. This classification will likely have both legal and societal implications.

As a side note: this obviously falls under the “orama” part of neatorama.  As a parent I  personally found the article incredibly disturbing on many levels.

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I remember my favorite books from when I was a kid, and none of them covered such wide-ranging topics as these.  See some of the strangest, funniest, and most disturbing children’s books ever.

I remember reading The House That Jack Built. I loved it. This book takes that same rhyming style and turns it into a ghetto-fabulous tale of the dangers of crack, from start to finish. It begins with the exploited South American workers in the coca fields and goes all the way to the streets of the inner city.

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From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by sish2000.

For one, people under 30 experienced anger of all forms or intensities more frequently than did older adults. This was mainly due to the fact that young people are more likely to be affected by three core stressors that can trigger angry feelings, Schieman said:

* Time pressures
* Economic hardship
* Interpersonal conflict at the workplace

Time pressures had the strongest link to anger, especially low-grade versions termed "feelings of annoyance," the study found.

Those who were under financial strain tended to report higher levels of anger, a connection that could be particularly important in today’s flagging economy, Schieman noted. The financial influence tended to be stronger among women and younger adults.

Having children was also associated with angry feelings and behaviors, such as yelling, particularly in women, the survey found.

"There’s obviously a lot of joys and benefits that come with parenthood," but other aspects of parenting, such as having to discipline a misbehaving child, can cause feelings of anger and annoyance, Schieman said.

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Illustration by Shaun Tan

The Book Review has an annual roundup of the best in children’s books from an illustrative point.  Books for kids are crucial for learning the language, and if you can lure them in with outstanding visuals, all the better.  NYT has the ten best, including this one from Shaun Tan’s “Tales From Outer Suburbia.”  Tan also won a slot in 2007 for the phenomenal, wordless “The Arrival.”

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Children are rarely familiar with the names the LEGO company gives its various bricks and accessories. Giles Turnbull was delighted to find his son had his own terms for each piece. So he gathered more children, four in all, to find out what names they used, and assembled those names in a handy chart. Link -via Buzzfeeed

* Should the allowance be given freely OR tied to chores?
* Should I only pay for extra chores?
* How much money should I give my kid?
* Should I let them spend it on what they want OR should I force them to save a portion of it?
* Coins, bills, or a savings account?
* How often should I give him/her allowance?

Personally, I give the kids a set amount every week, in order to teach them by trial and error how to handle money. The amount is less than their friends get, which forces them to think hard about how they spend it. Their allowance is not tied to performing family chores, but occasionally I give a bonus to someone who has been extra helpful (only as a surprise). How does your family handle children and their money, or how do you plan to do it? Link -via Consumerist

(image credit: Flickr user Pingu1963)

After 26 years of teaching children (literally my entire life), Reading Rainbow is being cancelled. It’s not for a lack of interest, but a lack of funding for the show. NPR says the show also was victim of a “shift in the philosophy of educational television programming,” that started under Bush.

I don’t know how many of you grew up in the 80′s, but Reading Rainbow will be sorely missed by those of us who did have the show to thank for our early interest in reading.

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Need a good excuse for why you’re late to/absent from work? The Office Kid kit lets you pretend to have a child, which you can then use as an excuse for your questionable work ethic. Each kit comes with a framed picture of a child (ethnicity of your choice), a work of children’s art, and a list of suggested excuses. For additional fees, you can have the child photoshopped into a sports team picture or a doctor’s note on official-looking stationery.

Link via Bits & Pieces

Virginia Beach, Virginia
Madison, Alabama
San Jose, California
Overland Park, Kansas
Boston, Massachusetts
Denver, Colorado
Rochester, Minnesota
Cedar Rapids, Iowa
Plano, Texas
Edison, New Jersey

The advantages of each city are listed in the story and slide show. Link -via Digg

The report by USDA’s Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion notes that family income affects child rearing costs. A family earning less than $56,870 per year can expect to spend a total of $159,870 (in 2008 dollars) on a child from birth through high school. Similarly, parents with an income between $56,870 and $98,470 can expect to spend $221,190; and a family earning more than $98,470 can expect to spend $366,660. In 1960, a middle-income family could have expected to spend $25,230 ($183,509 in 2008 dollars) to raise a child through age seventeen.

When you consider the income levels in these calculations, it doesn’t seem all that bad. Many families spend more than that on a house. Then again, the child’s shelter expense is the biggest item on the total bill, comprising 32% of the total. Link -via J-Walk Blog

(image credit: Flickr user Matt Stratton)

Fortunately, scientists have come up with a great way to increase your likelihood of getting your wallet back -put cute kids pictures in it. Adorable images of children trigger a person’s empathy and their “compassionate instinct towards vulnerable infants that people have evolved to ensure the survival of future generations.”

Wallets with a cute baby pic were sent back 90% of the time, whereas those with no images only had a one out of seven chance of reuniting with their previous owner.

Link Via Consumerist

Children held hands so that 50,000 volts could pass through their fingers. Other children were exposed to tear gas.

A total of 43 children were directly and indirectly shocked by electric stun guns during simultaneous Take Your Sons and Daughters to Work Day events gone wrong at three state prisons last month. One was a warden’s daughter.

None of the children required medical attention or were notably harmed, McNeil said. He said the victims, who ranged in age from 5 to 17, were all children of prison officials. In nearly every case, the guards who administered the “electronic immobilization devices” had permission from parents or grandparents.

Link

Who’s the boss at your house?
1. Mom doesn’t want to be boss, but she has to because dad’s such a goof ball.
2. Mom. You can tell by room inspection. She sees the stuff under the bed.
3. I guess Mom is, but only because she has a lot more to do than dad.

What does your Mom do in her spare time?
1. Mothers don’t do spare time.
2. To hear her tell it, she pays bills all day long.

What would it take to make your Mom perfect?
1. On the inside she’s already perfect. Outside, I think some kind of plastic surgery.
2. Diet. You know, her hair. I’d diet, maybe blue.

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Happy Mother’s Day, everybody!

These are a great idea and are certain to get children to play with their food -of course, that may not really help get them to eat their veggies. They will be availible on April 10th and are a reasonable $10.

Link

Well, according to a new study by pediatrician Dr. Ulfat Shaikh at UC Davis School of Medicine, health doesn’t have much to do with why kids take vitamins … but poverty does:

Researchers derived the information from an analysis of National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey results from 1999 to 2004. They found that about one-third of American children ages 2 to 17 had used a vitamin or mineral supplement within the previous month, but that most of them did not need to supplement their diet.

On the other hand, children who used vitamins the least tended to be at greatest risk for nutritional deficits. They did not eat as well as the children who were taking supplements, lived in low-income families that were short of food and had less access to health care, the study found.

“Poverty seems to be the overriding factor,” Dr. Shaikh said. Although supplements may not seem expensive to a middle-class family, the cost may be onerous for a low-income family, she said. “Parents who were poor were perhaps unable to afford supplements.”

Link

McSweeney’s has a fantastic compilation of childrens’ letters to Obama. Some of them are so adorably fantastic. It seems to be kids between 5 and 12 mostly. Even if you don’t like Obama, you still can appreciate the innocence of their words.

Dear President Obama,

When you are president, don’t eat junk food. Junk food makes you fat. Your family shouldn’t eat junk food, either, because it is not healthy. Obama, you rock.

Amy Ramirez, age 8
San Francisco

Dear President Obama, Are you going to be pictured on our money? How do you get in the White House? Do you like Abraham Lincoln? Do you have a big backyard? Martin Luther King Jr. had big fans. How many fans do you have? You could help us by giving us food. I am Luis Ramirez. I go to school at Mayberry. I like to play video games.

Luis Ramirez, age 8
Los Angeles

Link

Directed by Michelle Lehman, last year’s Tropfest Australia winning film, Marry Me, tells a little love story about “a little girl who likes a little boy and a little boy who likes his BMX bike”. The film was inspired by a true story when director, Michelle, at 5 years of age, would chase Jason Mahooney around the school in a pretend wedding dress (her mother’s nightie).

You go, girl! -via I Am Bored