SOUNDTRACK: “Neverending Afro Circus” (2012).
If you’ve seen the movie Madagascar 3, you’ll recognize this song as the earworm that you will be singing all the way home. And that your kids will no doubt be singing for days.
I actually want to jump in and say that I saw Madagascar 3 without seeing Madagascar 2 and I was quite lost (and missed a lot of in-jokes, apparently) for the first 20 or so minutes. Who would have guessed that a kids movie could do that to you?
Anyhow, back to this song. C. and T. love it. And it turns out that YouTube loves it too. There are dozens of different videos of varying lengths (from 10 seconds to 59 minutes!!) repeating this wonderful nonsense. But for real neverending Afro Circus, please visit AfroCircus.com and see how much you can stand.
For a measly ten minute loop, please enjoy this:
[youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_aELcXyjpts%5D
[READ: July 2012] Danger Guys series
We loved Droon so much we had to see what else Tony Abbott had written.
Turns out that he has written a lot of books and a bunch of series. In addition to Droon he has written four books that are not part of any series, a series called The Haunting of Derek Stone and a brand new series called UnderWorlds. UnderWorlds looks like a great series for C., although Haunting and the stand alone books seem like they might be a little too old for him. He also has some older series like Don’t Touch That Remote!, Goofballs, Time Surfers and The Weird Zone. (I think that’s all of them).
He also has this Danger Guys series, which I believe comprised his first novels.
My major complaint about the series is…why is it out of print? Why was it so hard for me to find? I had to do an Inter Library Loan and the copies I received were so beat up that we may wind up being the last people to read them! This is a real shame because these books were fantastic! The series is about two boys Noodle (the smart one) and Zeke (the athletic one). They are best friends and do everything together. I’m not exactly sure how old they are…I’m guessing middle school? In each book they get into an escalating series of adventures which can be resolved by logic, brains, strength and sometimes a little luck. The books are mildly scary (the Halloween one is the most scary but even that…not really), they’re not violent or gross, but they are full of adventure and they’re very funny (an Abbott specialty). There were several moments that C. was laughing very hard at these.
There are six books in total in the series. And because the books aren’t radically different from each other, I’m only going to say a few lines about each. (more…)
I Just Read About That... 