Last week I was able to attend the Soft Opening of Star Tours – The Adventures Continue while at Disney’s Hollywood Studios and I have a few thoughts to share about the ride and the Star Wars Weekend for 2011. Let’s talk about the ride first. Since it was a preview I...

Is being true to oneself and having fun while doing it more important, or pleasing one’s parents? That is a question that is often very difficult to answer, and it’s one that, eventually, most of us face. It’s a question that Dennis Ouyang, an Asiatic teen in the First Second (0:1) graphic...

Kirby’s Epic Yarn for the Wii is a fun-filled game for 1-2 players that the whole family can enjoy playing, regardless of your age level. Now, I’ll admit that when I started playing the game, this was not my initial opinion of it. At first, I thought the word “yarn” only meant...

What do an orphaned street musician, an apprentice clockmaker, and a maid in a grand hotel have in common? Not much, on the surface; but in the magnificent, page-turning novel The Clockwork Three by Matthew J. Kirby, the lives of these three children soon interlock, like the turning gears of a clock,...

Alienation, an unsolved murder, and a ghost who is not-so-friendly are the subject matters of Anya’s Ghost, by the extraordinary author/illustrator Vera Brosgol, for First Second (:01). Anya is like any typical teenager–well, any who are embarrassed by their families, are self-conscious about their bodies, and have a hard time trying to...

  American Idol‘s top 4 results were shocking to many. Like many seasons before it, they always have a shocker. In this case it has now happened twice this season. Before I go on about who was eliminated, let’s go through the overview on what went down on the elimination show. The...

Dragons, sprites, griffins, goddesses, and trolls aren’t what you might usually think of when you try to imagine San Francisco and Hawaii in the year 1941, but those are the sorts of mythical beings who populate them in the two-time Newberry Honor Award-Winning author Laurence Yep’s latest page-turning urban fantasy novel, City...

The Dark Zone is the exciting fourth and much-anticipated book in Dom Testa’s Galahad series. Does it live up to the hype? Is it worth your money to buy it, and time to read it? Does it develop the characters further, to go beyond being a SF novel filled with teen angst...

Even though Fantastic Pets shares more with the Sony Eye Pet game, I can’t shake the feeling that this is how Kinectimals should have worked.  My two boys have been having a blast with Fantastic Pets!  After the boys got set up, we had two customized dragons at our disposal for playing. ...

Lemonade Mouth is an original Disney Channel film about a band that is formed in high school and their struggles with life and their band. You watch the group of 5 form and face the world. You see their ups and downs, and the even ground that they roam. They storm the...

Feed your need, all of you zombies out there! Feast on the conclusion of David Lubar’s famous, always humorous, but sometimes gross series Nathan Abercrombie: Accidental Zombie with the coolest book of the series yet, Enter the Zombie! Why is it the coolest? Because it’s got action, adventure, Nathan and his friends...

Redakai cards were in the list of super cool (wow factor) items I was able to witness at Toy Fair 2011 that would be in the hands of my children at a rather low price point.  Plus as a parent when we start talking about things that my children can collect, I am always...

Dust off your dancin’ boots, grab your pardner, and get ready to dance to 25+ of the greatest country hits of today and yesterday, interacting with the dancers on your television screen as you play the latest Nintendo Wii game, Country Dance! It’s a fun way to spend quality time with your...