New...Blogs!: Kid Pop and Beyond

When I started working at Cookie magazine and took over editing its children's-entertainment section, I didn't know that I was among the most fortunate magazine editors of all time. But I was, because Christopher Healy wrote the section, and his immense knowledge of children's literature, music, movies, and games, combined with his superb writing and insights, made my job incredibly, absurdly easy. Along the way, he also taught me just about everything I know about covering the subject; there is no question that if I'd never met Chris, You Know, for Kids would not exist.

So I'm thrilled to announce that Chris has launched his own blog, Kid Pop … and Beyond. He explains its mission fully over there, so I won't step on that too much, but in a nutshell he's aiming to cover a subject close to my heart, and I suspect those of most readers of this blog as well: kids' entertainment with crossover adult appeal. I encourage anyone who reads this blog to check it out—in fact, since I'll be frequenting his posts regularly as a reader myself, maybe I'll see you over there!

Security Blanket: Flip Ultra

I am, I know, way behind the curve in my appreciation of Flip cameras, which I first remember hearing colleagues at Cookie rave about three or so years ago. I believed them, but it never seemed like the most important gap in our technology world to fill; after all, we had a perfectly functional video camera already.

Then last year, Grandpa, having learned of our six-year-old's fascination not only with movies in general but with how they're made (he's started watching the "making of" extras on every DVD intently), decided to buy Dash his own Flip Ultra for Christmas. We complemented the generous gift with the popular kids’ Movie Maker kit, and Dash was off and running.

To be honest, in yet another sign that I'm getting old, it felt kind of weird to be giving a six-year-old a serious video camera aimed at adults. I'll even admit to worrying that taking care of real technology would be too much to ask of our somewhat klutzy child. But either my initial imprecations that he be especially careful with the camera took root for once, or I was overestimating the danger in the first place. (Yes, I know which of those the smart money is on.)

Dash was enthralled by the chance to use technology by himself, of course, but that phase faded more quickly than I'd expected. It was replaced by the drive to get working on a film of his own—which, thanks to the excellent kit, a great primer, he knew meant preparing a script. (His project is a version of Dickens's A Christmas Carol, with all the parts played by stuffed animals and monster puppets. Which at least means we have most of the dialogue written already—the kid is savvy, beginning with an adaptation, and one with the rights in public domain, to boot!)

Now, I don't want to exaggerate his dedication or focus here—Dash is still six, and we move forward with the project only in fits and starts; we shot our first scenes only last weekend. But he keeps asking to return to it weekend after weekend, which has kind of amazed me. What amazes me even more, when I stop to think about it, is that a six-year-old and his not particularly tech-savvy parents actually can shoot and edit their own Dickens adaptation in our own home. My own six-year-old self is very jealous.

The only problem, really, is that we always want to use the Flip for ourselves instead of our own video camera (which recently, and conveniently, died anyway). While this hasn’t yet led to any conflict, I'm thinking that we ought to get our own soon….


[Image courtesy of Cisco]

Inspiration Information

It's a new month, so I can put up one more housekeeping post: Momfilter, a new parenting/lifestyle website from the founding editors of Cookie magazine, is live! As I mentioned a little while back, I'll be cross-posting there and here on kids' entertainment each and every Friday (starting this coming Friday!); I'll also be contributing to the site on subjects outside of kids' entertainment.

But since anyone reading this likely has read their fill of me already, the real draw is, well, everything else: Brilliant ideas and solutions and thoughts from some of the savviest, smartest parents I know on nearly every subject known to parenting. As Pilar and Yolanda put it, the idea is "just the right balance of inspiration and information"—which happens to be not only the perfect aspiration for a parenting website, but also a subtle (and I'm gonna say intentional) reference to a great Shuggie Otis tune. Check Momfilter out!