In the first episode of TSMBSS, we meet two plumbers, Mario and Luigi, played by Lou Albano and Danny Wells, who perform a brief comedy segment (“Neatness Counts”) involving Nicole Eggert, a clogged drain, and making a mess. It’s pretty awful, but no one was watching this show for the live action segments, I’ll wager.

Was this how you imagined Mario and Luigi to look?

After the live action segment, the animated story (“The Bird! The Bird!”) begins. Mario and Luigi, having just rescued Princess Toadstool, are travelling in a frozen wasteland, along with Toad, who is suddenly kidnapped by a nearsighted Birdo who mistakes him for her child.

While the others are trying to save Toad, King Koopa receives a report on the situation (and, rather creepily, orders his minions to lick his feet). He sends his Koopa Troopas to attack while the Mario brothers are distracted, but they deflect the attack. Ultimately, Koopa leads the attack himself, but with the help of the Birdo, whose child they have restored to her, they succeed in repelling Koopa and his minions.

After the animated segment ends, another live action segment plays, continuing the story from the first segment. After a brief interruption for a preview of the next episode of The Legend of Zelda, the live action segment concludes–though the Mario Brothers have made a horrible mess of Nicole Eggert’s outfit, it’s fine, because she was going to a ‘sloppy party’ and they’ve saved her the trouble of buying an outfit. Yeah, right.

Well, that’s the plot. As the screenshots reveal, the video quality (on Netflix) is pretty poor–it looks like a bad VHS transfer, really. What the screenshots don’t show is that the audio is also problematic, though not because it’s unclear. Rather, the background music and sound effects are so loud that it can be quite difficult to understand the dialogue, sometimes. I assume that they figured that the big draw for the show was that it was based on the video games, so they wanted to emphasize that connection, by using music from the games, and inappropriate sound effects all over the place.

The live action segment is just bad comedy, and the animated segment is a fairly average cartoon. I’m not an eight year old, to squeal with joy over seeing video game characters on television, but it is still kind of fun. I’d say that if you’re a fan of the Mario games, and you’d like to see something a bit different, it’s worth checking this out, but it’s hardly the kind of thing you’ll want to watch over and over.

Do the Mario!

As the screencap will indicate to some of you, I’ve recently started using Netflix, and I’ve been pretty impressed with the selection. One thing that it lacks, though, is an easy way to find shorts. I don’t always have two hours to spend on a movie, but I might like to spend a few minutes watching something when I’ve got a bit of free time. Sadly, I’ve not yet found a way to display only shorts–and probably there’s only a very limited selection of them available, anyway.

But enough of that.

30-Second Bunnies Theatre is a collection of short episodes spoofing movies, with bunnies. Some of them are pretty amusing, though mostly they just seem to summarize the film in question.

Fight Club... with bunnies. I approve of this.

The basic format of each short is pretty simple: take the more memorable scenes/lines from the film, compress each to about a second, and animate it with bunnies. String these together in order, and you have an extremely abbreviated summary of the film.

The good news is that the selection of scenes (in those episodes I’ve seen, anyway) is good and the transition to animation and bunnies is usually amusing. The bad news is that the shorts will be incomprehensible if you’ve not seen the original film, and they tend more toward summary than parody. It’s worth checking out the shorts for films you’ve seen, when you’ve got the time, but it’s not worth going out of your way to see them, and I’d certainly not recommend watching the spoofs for any films you haven’t seen.

Well, not too different.

How could I resist this cover? They're adorable!

Tiny Titans is a spin-off of the Teen Titans comics, following around younger versions of the Teen Titans, who attend Sidekick City Elementary. This issue contains several very short stories, including “Dog’s Best Friend” and “Speedy Quiz”, and several that are simply labeled “tiny titans.”

The only thing there really is to say about this comic is that it is very cute. There are silly jokes, like pointing out the fact that Speedy doesn’t have super-speed, but this issue is carried by its cute artwork and amusing premise. That’s enough, though, for one issue.

Later, Slade will introduce the substitute teacher... Mr. Trigon. Poor kids.

This whole issue had me smiling and giggling as I read it, so I’ve got to call it a success.

This issue, along with the next five, can be found collected in Tiny Titans Volume 1: Welcome to the Treehouse.

Life’s settled into a pleasant pattern of baby-sitting and hanging out with her friends, when the members of the Baby-Sitters Club learn that a new group, the Baby-Sitters Agency, are moving in on their territory. On top of that, Stacey’s parents want to take her to yet another doctor, hoping for a miracle cure to her diabetes, when all she wants is to go to school and stay with her friends. What’s Stacey to do?

The Truth About Stacey is the third book in Ann M. Martin’s The Baby-Sitters Club series. This time, the story is told from Stacey’s point of view.

I like the story in this one very much–both major plotlines are well-done and have good messages. The Baby-Sitters Agency, in the persons of Liz and Michelle, provides a good ‘villain’ for the story, and when the members of the Baby-Sitters Club begin to suspect that their rivals may not be such responsible baby-sitters as they make themselves out to be, it provides a good lesson about what’s really important: to be responsible and ethical, even in the face of a challenge. To beat their rivals not through trickery, but by being better baby-sitters. Of course, the lesson in corporate espionage writ small is probably useful, too.

The second plotline, with Stacey’s parents dragging her about the country in search of a cure for diabetes is well done, too. As Dr. Graham points out at the end: “Stacey seems incredibly healthy . . . and that comes from one thing only: regulating the amount of insulin in her body.” Seeking miracle cures for diseases is not productive, and I hope that children who read this book will grow up to be skeptical of such things. If everyone were as sensible as Stacey, the world would be a better (and healthier) place.

I must say, I really like the technique of writing each of these books from a different character’s point of view. It both gives us insight into how the characters feel about themselves and one another, and prevents the repetition of the premise in each book from getting too stale. Rather than Kristy telling us three times that she had the great idea for the Baby-Sitters Club, we get to hear instead how the formation of the club affected each of the members. Very well done, indeed.

The Truth About Stacey is, like the other books in the series, a great middle grade book, with both excellent story and characterization, and I’d recommend it without reservation to anyone looking for middle grade fiction.

Also like the other books in the series, The Truth About Stacey is now available as an ebook for the Kindle, so ebook readers can join in the fun, too.

On account of the recently reduced prices for Kindles, I have just purchased a Kindle Keyboard, which I’m enjoying, so far. After I’d played around with it a bit, I remembered my previous concern for how picture books would look, and decided I’d find out. I looked around a little, and ultimately got a sample of The Berenstain Bears and Too Much Junk Food.

To begin the comparison, let’s first look at the beginning of the print version.

I’ve not bothered to scan the whole right page, but you can see enough for our purposes. Next, let’s look at the sample on Kindle for PC.

You can see (if you click the image to view it full-sized) that the illustration is quite small. However, it has had the top of the tree drawn in, which I suppose is nice. The next paragraph, which, in the print version, is on the same page, has been moved to a new page in the Kindle version.

What exactly has happened, here? These two pages are both showing parts of the original illustration, but in the second, the tree house has been removed, and the illustration from the right page has been joined up with the remaining illustration from the left page. The illustration is, again, quite small.

I suppose that the book looks okay on Kindle for PC, but it’s not the same as the print version. The illustrations are difficult to see and have been redrawn a bit, but not (as far as I can see from the sample) with much creativity–no fun revelations here.

How about on the actual Kindle, then?

I should note that on the actual Kindle, the contrast is much better–the background is significantly lighter than it appears in this picture.

Of course, it looks substantially similar to the pictures of Kindle for PC, which is natural since it’s the same book sample. However, two things are immediately apparent: first, the tiny, grainy images on the Kindle screen remind me of the web circa 1996; second, without the color, these images just aren’t that nice.

In my opinion, these books aren’t really worth purchasing for the Kindle. The artwork is really what carries these books, and it’s simply not reproduced well on the Kindle–neither the actual Kindle nor the Kindle for PC software. This isn’t entirely the fault of the Kindle itself–the artwork looks bad in the file the Kindle is displaying, so of course it can’t make it look any better. Still, if this book is representative of the quality of the Berenstain Bears books on the Kindle, I’d strongly recommend buying paper versions, instead.

Christa, Klaas, and Thomas are afraid of Meena, and when they find a girl, Anna, that has clearly been bewitched by Meena, they try to warn her, only for her to angrily reply that Meena is not a witch–she’s Anna’s grandmother! Could the three children be wrong about Meena?

Meena is a children’s picture book by Sine van Mol, illustrated by Carianne Wijffels. Originally published in Dutch in 2010, as Mina lieverd, and English version is scheduled to be published on September 15, 2011 by Eerdmans Books for Young Readers.

The first thing I noticed about this book–surely the first thing anyone would notice–is the unique art style. Or, more correctly, the unique art styles. The book contains two very different kinds of art. The children imagine Meena to be a witch, so we see Meena-as-a-witch drawn in crayon in a simple style by the children. The real events of the story, on the other hand, are drawn in a much more detailed style–especially noticeable are the very detailed patterns of the clothing. Each kind of illustration is very nice and appropriate, and the contrast between the two styles provides a wonderful effect.

The story is pretty simple: the children believe Meena to be a witch, but when they meet her granddaughter and taste her cherry pie, they learn that she is just a kind old woman. It is too simple to be engaging as a story for older readers–I fear that the children at the top end of the 5-9 age range the book suggests may find it slightly dull–but the art is interesting enough, I think, for even adults to find the book worthwhile.

I’d recommend Meena for young children, especially those just beginning to read. Anyone can enjoy the beautiful illustrations, though, so you might consider it for both older readers and children not quite up to reading by themselves, yet.

Disclosure: this review is based on an advance copy received free for review.

Ragin’ Mama and the Lying Covers

It sounds like a good name for a band, to me, and it pretty succinctly describes the problem with some of these books.

The Berenstain Bears and the Truth (1983), The Berenstain Bears and Too Much Junk Food (1985), The Berenstain Bears Forget their Manners (1985)

Notice any similarities in these? In these, and quite a few others, Mama is standing off to the left, looking at her family, furious. This is partly just laziness in composition of the image–the adults are often standing off to the left in Berenstain Bears covers, angry or not, but Mama is the usually the one raging over some slight–Papa is more likely to join in on whatever misbehavior has Mama so angry.

But, this isn’t even accurate. Although Mama is generally dispensing sage wisdom from on high (“Stop doing that! Don’t! Be more polite!” and on, and on, and on..), she doesn’t generally actually get very angry. The covers that depict her as some kind of inhuman (un-bear?) monster, raging at her family and the world, are generally just lying about what’s happening in the book. It’s like putting Wolverine on the covers of comics, even if he only gets a brief cameo–I guess an angry Mama Bear sells books.

Hypocrisy

A good name for a debut album? Ragin’ Mama and the Lying Covers present Hypocrisy, in their studio debut! Maybe not.

Some of the Berenstain Bears books are overly moralizing, and even the often-amusing artwork can’t always make up for that. But what’s especially bad about it is that Mama isn’t always the paragon of virtue she is portrayed as. I noted in my review of The Berenstain Bears Forget their Manners that I thought Mama’s approach to correcting her children’s manners–screaming at them–was worse than the ‘crimes’ that she was complaining about, like ‘playing with food.’ Let’s have a look at the pages that I’m talking about.

The Berenstain Bears Forget their Manners (1985)

Maybe it makes me a liberal hippy something-or-other, but I just don’t think that screaming at your children and beating your fists on the table while they’re trying to eat is the best parenting method. It certainly doesn’t seem polite. Intimidating, yes. Polite, no.

I mentioned in my review that The Berenstain Bears in the Freaky Funhouse contains a spectacular example of hypocrisy: Mama repeatedly scolds her children for gossiping about grownups, but feels no compunction against gossiping, herself. The lesson, of course, is that some people are more equal than others, and adults are above children on the ladder of ‘more equal.’ Pure hypocrisy.

This isn’t one of the most common problems with Berenstain Bears books–Mama is usually portrayed as the perfect embodiment of whatever virtue the book is pushing, which can be pretty irritating–but it is one of the worst. If you want to try to teach kids good morals, you’d better examine your own, first. Moralist, chastise thyself.

Form Follows Function

Good for design, not so much for writing children’s books. Some Berenstain Bears books have a story that’s just an excuse to teach a lesson. I presume that the idea was that parents would think “Gee, my kids are ungrateful brats, how can I get them to shut up and stop asking for new toys?” Said parents would then see The Berenstain Bears Count Their Blessings in the store, and know that it was the right tool for the job. Ditto for The Berenstain Bears Forget their Manners, obviously a prop for parents hoping to introduce a system of harsh punishments for minor transgressions, The Berenstain Bears and Too Much Junk Food, for parents with children who (through no fault of the parents!) eat too much candy, and The Berenstain Bears and the Truth, for parents whose children are dirty liars.

Maybe I’m being unfair to these books. The scene with the ever-more-exotic imaginary bird in The Berenstain Bears and the Truth is amusing, and… well, the artwork is pretty competent in the others. The Berenstain Bears Count Their Blessings teaches some science. Incorrect science, but, hey, at least they tried!

What have we learned?

There’s one common theme here–the books are overly moralizing, and the flaws all stem from that problem, either through incompetence or zeal. The moral should reveal itself naturally through the story. If you start by thinking “How can I teach those brats to be civil?” and write the story from there, you’ve made one mistake (and a big one) already.

In short, your story needs to be sincere. If you’ve got an ulterior motive, it’ll show.

On top of all this, the boy Claudia likes, Trevor Sandbourne, doesn’t seem to know she exists, and the school dance, the Halloween Hop, is coming up. Claudia’s sister, Janine, is as unbearable as usual, and although Claudia tries to work on their relationship, like her grandmother suggested, there’s just not enough time!

Claudia and the Phantom Phone Calls is a middle-grade novel, the second in the Baby-Sitters Club series by Ann M. Martin. It’s told from Claudia’s point of view.

The change from Kristy’s point of view in Kristy’s Great Idea to Claudia’s in this book is good. Despite Claudia repeating a lot of events that happened in the previous book, it’s still interesting, since we get to heat her perspective on the events and on her friends. It might get a little old if there’s that much repetition in future books, but it’s not too bad, this time.

The story is great. There are several plotlines going at once. Primarily, the girls are trying to be brave and babysit while they’re worried about the Phantom Caller, and this just intensifies when they start getting mysterious phone calls, with the caller hanging up without speaking. This plotline is great, and there’s some real suspense when they’re babysitting and they hear strange noises and receive phone calls like those from the Phantom Caller. You know that they’re bound to be all right in the end, but could there be a thief, waiting to break into the homes, while they’re babysitting?

The second plotline, with Claudia hoping that Trevor will ask her to the dance, gives us plenty of opportunity to see how all the girls feel about the subject of boys, and is a good secondary plot for the novel.

Finally, Claudia’s desire to improve her relationship with her sister, though showing up rarely throughout the book, provides a good reminder that these characters have more going on in their lives than just the main events of the book, and gives a sense that they’re real people with real relationships, rather than just characters in a story, serving only the purpose of furthering the plot.

Claudia and the Phantom Phone Calls is another great middle-grade novel, and a good followup to Kristy’s Great Idea. It’s definitely worth reading, and, like the previous book in the series, will be available as an ebook for the Kindle starting October 1, 2011.

Claudia invites Stacey, a girl who just moved from New York, to join them, and they set up meeting times, post flyers, and even take out an ad in the newspaper. Calls start coming in, and things are looking up, but there are troubles, too: Kristy’s first job is baby-sitting a pair of dogs, Stacey seems to be hiding something, and to top it all off, Kristy’s mother might be getting remarried! Will the club stay together, or will they be torn apart?

Kristy’s Great Idea is the first book in the Baby-Sitters Club series by Ann M. Martin. A middle grade novel, it focuses on the characters and their relationships, as they’re forming a club.

The characters are really well done. The (one-sided) cold war between Kristy and Watson, her mother’s boyfriend, is an excellent B-plot for the novel, both keeping things moving between club meetings and filling out Kristy’s character. Since the book is told from Kristy’s point of view, Stacy, Claudia, and Mary Anne don’t get as much development, but we still see enough to get a feel for them, and I’m sure we’ll get much more in-depth pictures of them in future books in the series.

I called Watson’s plotline the B-plot, but it really gets about equal time with the establishment of the club and the girls’ interactions. And it works well, that way. When Kristy is interacting with Watson, of course that’s what’s foremost in her mind, so it gets center stage, and so it never feels like Kristy’s a one-trick pony, a babysitter foremost and everything else a distant second, as it can feel when books focus too much on a single aspect of a character. Instead, Kristy seems like a real person, with the several concerns that one would expect of someone in her situation.

As for the club and the girls’ interactions: also great. When Kristy hit on the idea, near the beginning, to establish the club, I realized I’d already begun to become invested in her character, because I felt a little sense of accomplishment on her behalf, for the idea. The relationships between the four girls aren’t identical, either, which is good: Mary Anne and Kristy are closer to one another than to Claudia, and only Claudia is acquainted with Stacey, initially, so there’s a much more interesting dynamic between the four than would be the case if Martin had (lazily) just said that they were all four best friends, and left it at that, as some books tend to do.

The girls are quite self-reliant, for twelve-year-olds. They draw up and distribute flyers for themselves, only relying on an adult to photocopy them, and they (apparently) place the ad in the newspaper on their own, as well. That’s not to say that they have no adult supervision. Actually, the struggles between parent and child form a much larger part of these books than is usual–often, parents are quite absent in middle grade fiction, in order to let the children take center stage, but in Kristy’s Great Idea, the girls must take into account their parents’ wishes when making plans, and the differing rules and expectation their parents have of them. It all comes together to create a set of fairly realistic, admirably self-reliant twelve-year-olds, and their families with them.

I could say much more about the book’s wit or how particular interactions between the characters are well done, but in the interest of brevity, let me say only this: Kristy’s Great Idea is a great book. If you’re interested in a book with well-realized characters and a character-driven story, read this.

Kristy’s Great Idea is also available as an ebook for the Kindle.

You’ll find these and other frightening folk tales in More Bones: Scary Stories from Around the World by Arielle North Olson and Howard Schwartz. This book retells 22 stories from diverse places, such as Ireland, Germany, Egypt, Spain, Japan, China, and more.

This book is very much in the vein of Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, though aimed at a slightly older audience, and with somewhat less frightening illustrations drawn by E. M. Gist. Also like that book, More Bones includes a bibliography listing the sources of the stories retold within. This is a nice feature, especially since the books are generally old enough to be in the public domain, like Fairy and Folk Tales of the Irish Peasantry by W. B. Yeats.

The stories are something of a mixed bag. Some of them are quite good, if simple, like “Youth Without Age” or “The Severed Head,” while others are fairly dull, like “The Haunted Violin.” There are more hits than misses, though.

Some of the artwork is close to being as frightening as that in Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, though I don’t like it quite as well. This may just be a result of nostalgia, though–the illustrations are good.

More Bones is a great book for someone who wants something a little more mature than Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, and the bibliography will provide plenty of additional stories, for those who are interested. Definitely pick it up if you’re interested in scary folk tales.

For those who prefer ebooks, More Bones is available for the Kindle, too.