How to use this Page

Dino-Boarding Written by Lisa Wheeler Illustrated by Barry Gott Carolrhoda Books          9/01/2014 978-1-4677-0213-3 32 pages       Age 4—8 A Junior Library Guild Selection “Team Green Machine battles the Shredding Crew for dino-boarding domination! Allo and Diplo thrill the surfing crowd, while Compy comes up short on a short board. …

Just currently oohing and ahhing over the very talented Matt Box’s watercolor skateboard video, which does not at all feature the music I’d expected.

Anyone here ever tried rotoscoping? It’s not as dangerous as it sounds, I don’t think. At least not compared to the skateboarding part. Then again, that may be the name for some guaranteed-fatal nose-grind maneuver. What do I know?

Click here to view the embedded video.

Share/Bookmark

Today's Ypulse Sponsored post is from Kiel Fletcher (pictured below) the events marketing manager at Fuse, anchor sponsor for this year's Ypulse Youth Marketing Mashup. This post is part of that sponsorship. To learn more about Fuse Marketing and... Read the rest of this post

10" x 10"
oil on illustration board

created for the stoked sessions l.a. fundraiser show.

Today's Ypulse Guest Post is from Omer Saar. Omer is an expert in urban youth culture/marketing and is the founder of UniverSOUL Productions. If you work in the youth media or marketing space and would like to write a guest post for Ypulse,... Read the rest of this post

I first grabbed this book off the pile at work because of the cover. Being married to a skater means that our family life is surrounded by things skateboarding related. Also, a good skateboarding story by Gutman would serve well at my school. Is this book about skating? Not-so-much.

Jimmy and his buddies (and little sister) are all on a plane, heading for California and the X-Games. Jimmy, David, and Henry (a.k.a. the woodpushers) are going to skate around and try to find sponsorship....or at least some free gear. Jimmy can't wait to get there. Not that he's scared to fly, but he just feels better on the ground.

Before they can get too far, the unthinkable happens. Terrorists are on the plane, hijacking it with plans on crashing. They quickly kill a stewardess and breech the cockpit. Jimmy can't believe it. His worst nightmare is happening, and the only other people on the plane are a bunch of old ladies heading to a knitting convention. They boys, with the help of hot stewardess Arcadia, put a plan in action to take down the terrorists.

The plane does end up crashing, and the boys, Jimmy's little sis Julia, Arcadia and one of the old women (Mildred) survive. But how will they end up surviving in the woods of the Canadian wilderness?

Now, I have never been a tween boy, but if this is what tween boy fantasies are like, then wow! This is a fast-paced adventure story that necessitates suspension of belief. Quite a bit happens in the week time period, but I won't pretend that I wasn't entertained. I just think that it's important to know that despite the cover (with a big gaff concerning the placement of the trucks on the skateboard pointed out by aforementioned husband) this is a survival story...not a skate story.

Everyday this week we are posting part of a series from author Lynne Viola, The Unknown Gulag: The Lost World of Stalin’s Special Settlements. Check out part one and part two and part three.

Luck and serendipity combined to provide unique and rich sources for the book. I was continually amazed at the degree of detail in the documents. Essentially, the Soviet secret police had documented some of its worst atrocities. The Soviet archives were marvelously intact.

(more…)

Share This