I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: I’M FROM BARCELONA-“Just Because It’s Different Doesn’t Mean It’s Scary” (2009).

I like I’m From Barcelona, although I don’t know too much about them.

This song opens with ukuleles (or small guitars anyhow) and a big farty bass line. It offers a sensible lyric about things being different and offers suggestions of new things you might enjoy, like fruit or a park.

The band has some fun backing vocals (“let’s taste it baby”), (“run run run run”) and have made a fairly complex song out of what is a very simple concept.

For these Yo Gabba Gabba songs I have to wonder if the bands have taken old songs and made them kid friendly or if they have written all new (fairly complex) songs just for the show.

This is a good one.

[READ: May 16, 2014] Squish: Super Amoeba

I thought I had written about all five of the Squish books so far (there’s a sixth one coming soon).  Except, I realized, that I never wrote about the first one.  So, here, three years after I first read it (I received it as a prepub for crying out loud, so I’ve had it for over three years), I’ve read it again for this post.

I hadn’t even read Babymouse when I read this book, although in retrospect it’s easy to see the similarities between the two (especially in the drawing style).  Of course, while Babymouse is colored primarily in pink, Squish is colored primarily in green.  And of course, Babymouse is a girl and Squish is a boy (well, a boy amoeba, but still a boy).  But there are kid friendly hardships and valuable (if not necessarily obvious) lessons to be learned.

All the characters who have been with us for the duration of the other books were introduced here: Pod another amoeba, who is Squish’ best friend and who is super smart, Peggy (a paramecium) who is happy all the time and Principal Planaria, who is a flatworm (and like all flatworms is really crosseyed).  This issue also introduces us to The Adventures of Super Amoeba, the comic book which Squish loves and the guy who acts as a role model for Squish.

In this particular book there is a big scary amoeba called Linwood who is the school bully.  Of course, his bullying means that he is going to absorb Peggy (which is what they do to paramecia) unless Squish helps him in math.

Squish asks his dad for advice, but he’s not terribly helpful (until after the fact when his punchline is perfect), so Squish uses the sage words of Super Amoeba “have the courage to do what’s right.”  Which may not necessarily apply in this situation.

The ending is very funny and quite a surprise.

I actually enjoyed Squish more than Babymouse because there’s a lot of cool interesting science stuff in the book.  I liked that Squish is smart but distracted and of course having super genius Pod trying to stop global warming was also very cool.  Every Holm book has a fun thing at the back and this one shows you how to grow your own mold.  It’s pretty funny (and scientifically accurate).  Yay Squish!