Dear Pop, My grandma is always talking about how wonderful the Baby Boom generation is. I did some research and discovered they are a bunch of self-indulgent consumers. Please tell me about my generation and how great we are so I can throw it back at her. BTW, I was born in 2008. 21stCentury Kid…
March is National Reading Month and it’s up to moms and dads to instill a love of reading in their children. To encourage them to improve their reading skills and develop a fondness for books it’s strongly suggested you set some time aside a few times a week for family reading time. This means…
In 2018 Pop read and reviewed 36 young adult novels. All of the books received 5 pops because they were thought provoking, imaginative, and the author’s writing style exemplary. Below you’ll find seven of his favorites plus his award-winning novel, Koolura and the Mayans. Title: Koolura and the Mayans Author: Michael Thal Awards: 2018 eLit…
Elai Nelson and the Prophecy of the Child is book one of the Fire on the Clouds Trilogy. The novel begins when Elai’s home is broken into by two goons who kill his adoptive parents and attempt to kidnap him. But with the help of his talking toothbrush (you read that right) the sixteen-year old manages…
With the New Year in sight, many of us think about changing ourselves for the better. Some people would like to lose weight while others may want to improve their grades in school. Improving the parent/child relationship should be on top of every parent’s to-do-list. This is not a one-sided effort. It means that children…
What can you possibly give to someone who has everything? It’s sometimes a tough issue trying to find a gift to give this person or others for Christmas. Here’s an idea. Christmastime is the season of giving. A few years ago my cousin Joni donated money in my honor to the American School for the…
History must have order and some symmetry of meaning so its students can process its content in an organized fashion. Consequently, history only records twelve princesses, a highly composite number, when in truth, there were thirteen of them. History also records those princesses going to sleep every night and waking up to find their slippers…
Since Halloween is Wednesday night, October 31, 2018, many parents are having trouble figuring out what to do with the kids? Afraid to let them go trick-or-treating for fear of the loonies out there? Here are a few ideas for parents spooked about Halloween. First of all, there’s nothing wrong with trick-or-treating. As my daughters…
In 1783 Wendy Darling was a foundling placed at the door of a London almshouse. As a child, she read The Live and Strange Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe,and ever after longed to sail the seven seas and experience all the magical wonders of the world. Mortimer Black, another orphan, knew the ways of the…
A twenty-three-year-old computer hacker illegally enters the computer of a cell phone manufacturer and finds a curious file. It’s huge with five terabytes of plain ASC11 text characters with a boring name—repository1-c.txt. He gives it a look and finds something curious; many of the numbers change constantly. Then he searches the file for his name….