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 5 Stars “If your child or grandchild has ever wondered when Santa fits in the traditional Christmas story, now you can read them Santa’s Birthday Gift.Finally, a book that ties two holiday traditions into one inspirational tale of wonder—as Santa brings gifts to baby Jesus.” Santa’s Birthday Gift is a wonderfully crafted story that explains [...]

5stars Gary only wants one thing – his father’s attention, if for only today’s father-son baseball game.  Dad goes to work, promising to make up for missing the game.  Gary does not want a future promise; he wants his dad to be there as all the other kids’ dads will be.  Gary goes to the [...]

Being marooned in Chicago, away from our immediate families, Krista and I have instigated a tradition of hosting our own Thanksgiving dinner and filling our table with good friends.  We have claimed Thanksgiving as “ours” and have hosted every year since arriving in Chicago.  What has allowed us to lay claim to the prestigious title of “Thanksgiving Hosts for Life” is our turkey, which has literally converted a vegetarian into a carnivore (I’m looking at you, B). 

At the risk of losing our claim to being the couple with the best turkey in the land, I feel compelled to share our recipe (stolen without remorse from the tv show Good Eats) and inspire your friends and family to tell tales of this Thanksgiving for years to come:

RECIPE  INGREDIENTS

1 (14-16 lb) turkey
Canola Oil

For Brine:

• 1 cup kosher salt
• ½ cup light brown sugar
• 1 gallon vegetable stock
• 1 tbsp black peppercorn
• ½ tbsp allspice berries
• ½ tbsp candied ginger
• 1 gallon iced water

For Aromatics:

• 1 red apple, sliced
• ½ onion, sliced
• 1 cinnamon stick
• 1 cup water
• 4 sprigs rosemary
• 6 leaves sage

Recipe Instructions

1. Combine all brine ingredients, except ice water, in a stock pot and bring to a boil.  Remove from heat, cool to room temp & refrigerate until chilled.
2. Early on the day of cooking (or like we do, late the night before), combine the brine and ice water in a 5 gallon bucket.  Place thawed turkey breast side down in brine, cover, and refrigerate for 6 hours.  Turn turkey over once, half way through brining.
3. A few minutes before roasting, heat oven to 500 degrees F.  Combine the apple, onion, cinnamon stick, and cup of water in a microwave safe dish & microwave on high for 5 minutes.
4. Remove bird from brine and rinse inside and out with cold water.  Discard brine.
5. Place bird on roasting rack inside wide, low pan and pat dry with paper towels.  Stuff aromatics w/ rosemary & sage inside bird.  Tuck back wings & coat whole bird liberally w/canola oil.
6. Roast on lowest level of the oven at 500 degrees F for 30 minutes.  Remove from oven and cover breast w/a double layer of aluminum foil.  Reduce temp to 350 degrees F.  Cook until thermometer reads 161 degrees F.  A 14-16 lb turkey should take 2-2.5 hours.
7. Let turkey rest, loosely covered for 15 minutes before carving.

A few tips:

Label your bucket.  Now that you have a Turkey Bucket, make sure nothing else goes inside!  You don’t want next year’s turkey to taste like Mr. Clean from the time you used the bucket to wash the car.

Be Resourceful.  If you don’t have room in your refrigerator, maybe it’s cold enough outside!  This is a little risky, but if you are sure of the forecast and can cover the bucket securely from critters, you can go “au natural” and use Mother Nature’s refrigerator.  Krista and I did this one year and put the bucket, brine and turkey in a large cardboard box on our front porch.  It made me feel very rustic and resourceful.

Make a test chicken!  Not only will you perfect your technique, but you’ll have a great recipe for any time of the year.  Whole chickens are a much cheaper per pound than other meats and you’ll look like Gordon Ramsey to your family.

Today, my wife handed me a list. I’m used to this; a list of things I need to pick up from the store, a list of errands to run, a list of things that need fixing around the house.

This list, however, inspired a mixture of delight and horror. It was the list of people that we need to buy Christmas presents for. “Hooray!” I thought, “it’s Christmas time.”

“Wait a sec…” came my next thought, “Isn’t it November 21st? Thanksgiving hasn’t even come yet!” There should be a law against what I call – “Christmas Creep”.

Don’t get me wrong, I looooooove Christmas-time, and I will listen to carols on the radio all season long, but this is getting serious people! As I mentioned in my last post, Thanksgiving is kind of our “thing”. And I don’t want materialistic shopping concerns horning in on my gastronomic festival!

Luckily for you, you are only a click away from crossing off every child under 6 from your Christmas or Hanukah shopping list. Orders of three books receive free shipping and now that we have 5 titles to choose from, you won’t have a hard time getting just the right gift for each of your sister’s impossible-to-shop-for triplets!

Unfortunately for me all of my family and friends have already bought every single one of our personalized books for every single one of their children… ahem… nudge, nudge.

I realize that by hawking our wares before the Thanksgiving cutoff I am only adding to the problem, but the sooner we all realize that MJM Books make the best possible presents and you needn’t look any further, the sooner we can get to what truly matters during the holidays. Eating.

Well, for anyone who does not know what this is all about, please go to Amazon and look for Everybody Masturbates.  I am not recommending you purchase this, nor do I profit from the click if you do.  It may be a cute little book, yet I now have reservations. The author, Mr. Christian YoungMiller, [...]

5stars Trina is worried about the Earth.  She knows that the Earth inhabitants, we Earthlings, do not care for our home as well as we should.  We hurt the Earth by throwing away too much, making the air dirty, and wasting power.  Trina thinks we Earthlings should do what her mother says, “Clean up your [...]

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Many parents are alarmed at the amount of time their kids spend mashing buttons on their X-Box or Playstation controllers.   They worry that, instead of being enriched and ennobled by the wonders of literature, their developing brains are being turned into ooze by these hypnotic machines.

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It may come as a small surprise, but all three of us at MJM Books enjoy a video game now and then.  In fact, World of Warcraft has given us a place where, despite our geographic separation, we can all “hang out” together… killing bandits and ogres.

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So what are we as publishers to think?  Aren’t video games the enemy of higher thought?  A place were we go to spend mindless and fruitless hours?  Shouldn’t kids be reading instead?

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It may surprise you that the choice isn’t either/or.   In fact, our books are based on the same principle as many video games: immersive, interactive adventure.  Video games (and our customizable kids’ books) place you directly in the story, making you the protagonist.  Often, the games involve an epic story that… wait for it… you read over the course many hours of playing.   The examples of this are everywhere from Zelda to Paper Mario to World of Warcraft.

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Even if there isn’t an epic story to read, there are often many on-screen instructions to be read during the course of a game (which buttons to press to move around or instructions about the goal of the game), and even more still if you pick up a game guide (a magazine that tells you how to access all the hidden secrets in the game).

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Some games have more emphasis on story and incorporate more reading than others so if you’re worried about junior’s lack of reading, consider the middle road and get him a game that will secretly and seamlessly fuse reading and zombie evading.

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You’re lucky, games nowadays focus more on story than ever before.  Remember “Pong”?  No story whatsoever.  Interestingly, this may be changing…  I just discovered a new version of Tetris that is First Person…  Instead of explaining, I will simply direct you to this awesome site.

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Game on!

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As technology continues to improve one thing is certain, the Internet will soon make it’s way into every area of our lives. We bank online, shop online, work online, and even date online.

The Internet is growing exponentially. New content pops up every second and, with “high speed” Internet service becoming a staple in most homes, that content is more readily and rapidly available than ever before.

While this is great news it also comes with a few caveats… for every kid friendly page we see on the internet there are probably a hundred pages most parents would rather their kids never find.

It’s no secret; kids are curious. If you put a group of adolescent boys alone in a room with a computer it won’t take too terribly long before a Google search for the word “boobies” is entered.  So what can parents do to keep their kids from viewing content that is not age appropriate?  Parent’s can’t watch and monitor their kids every second of the day.  Parents need an “always on” solution that will help filter the content their kids see.  Fortunately there is a solution to this, and best of all it’s free.

OpenDNS is a free service that acts as an “always on” content filtering system. With OpenDNS you set up a free account and then configure the type of content you’d like to allow or disallow.  You can filter by category or even specific web pages (ladies you can even keep your husband off those “questionable” sites… but don’t say we mentioned it!).

On a very basic level here’s how it works…. Computers use a DNS server to change a name to a numeric value. So when you open up the web page yahoo.com a DNS server translates “yahoo.com” to its numeric IP address (or 209.191.93.53).  Since yahoo.com is a heck of a lot easier to remember than 209.191.93.53 these DNS servers are pretty handy things to have.

All Internet service providers (ie.. Cox, Qwest, Charter, Comcast to name a few) also provide DNS servers for their customers to use.  Basically when you use OpenDNS you simply use their DNS servers instead of the ones given to you by your ISP.

So if you have concerns about where or what your kids are looking at on the web check out OpenDNS.

As technology continues to improve one thing is certain, the Internet will soon make it’s way into every area of our lives. We bank online, shop online, work online, and even date online.

The Internet is growing exponentially. New content pops up every second and, with “high speed” Internet service becoming a staple in most homes, that content is more readily and rapidly available than ever before.

While this is great news it also comes with a few caveats… for every kid friendly page we see on the internet there are probably a hundred pages most parents would rather their kids never find.

It’s no secret; kids are curious. If you put a group of adolescent boys alone in a room with a computer it won’t take too terribly long before a Google search for the word “boobies” is entered.  So what can parents do to keep their kids from viewing content that is not age appropriate?  Parent’s can’t watch and monitor their kids every second of the day.  Parents need an “always on” solution that will help filter the content their kids see.  Fortunately there is a solution to this, and best of all it’s free.

OpenDNS is a free service that acts as an “always on” content filtering system. With OpenDNS you set up a free account and then configure the type of content you’d like to allow or disallow.  You can filter by category or even specific web pages (ladies you can even keep your husband off those “questionable” sites… but don’t say we mentioned it!).

On a very basic level here’s how it works…. Computers use a DNS server to change a name to a numeric value. So when you open up the web page yahoo.com a DNS server translates “yahoo.com” to its numeric IP address (or 209.191.93.53).  Since yahoo.com is a heck of a lot easier to remember than 209.191.93.53 these DNS servers are pretty handy things to have.

All Internet service providers (ie.. Cox, Qwest, Charter, Comcast to name a few) also provide DNS servers for their customers to use.  Basically when you use OpenDNS you simply use their DNS servers instead of the ones given to you by your ISP.

So if you have concerns about where or what your kids are looking at on the web check out OpenDNS.

For the longest time, I thought that my father was magic.  He really only had one power, but it was impressive: he could turn off the rain with a snap of his finger!  Another snap, and it turned back on!

For some reason, he didn’t use his powers for the greater good, solving droughts and clearing up the weather at my soccer games, he only exercised this amazing power in two second intervals while driving in the rain at night… and going under overpasses…

Wait a second…

As an adult, you have a distinct intellectual advantage, and it is your right, nay, your DUTY to mystify your children/nephews/granddaughters with your brilliance and superpowers.  MJM Books wants to know: how do you put one over on your little ones? If we all share, we can increase our magical powers faster than a whole year of Hogwarts.

Please leave a comment and check out how other parents are fooling their trusting little angels.

The world is facing some pretty big problems: climate change, famine, war, terrorism, poverty… and little old you are just one person. For many people, the immensity of these problems only highlights for them a single person’s impotence against global scale issues.

Video games, however, are different. If you try hard enough, you WILL prevail. You can save the world/princess/lemmings through a series of levels of gradually increasing difficulty. In video games, you can be a winner, with wealth, power, prestige and (virtual) babes, even if, in life, you work at Blockbuster part time and crash on your buddy Steve’s futon. No wonder you would prefer to spend more time online than stocking copies of Twilight.

Extreme cases of this escapism has been in the news, with (usually Asian) gamers dying of dehydration/exhaustion after too much time online. One Korean couple recently let their real life baby starve while they cared for a virtual child online!

These stories are alarming, but it doesn’t end there. It may amaze you to know that we invest 3 billion hours a week playing games! It may alarm you even more to hear a video game expert assert that we need to spend MORE time gaming: she estimates that we should shoot for 21 billion hours a week.

This talk raises some very interesting points regarding the “virtuosity” that is attained by serious gamers. The skills they become virtuosic at are: Urgent Optimism (desire to act immediately combined with reasonable expectation of success), Weaving Social Fabric, Blissful Productivity (recognizing that we are happiest when engaged rather than “relaxing”), and Epic Meaning (attaching themselves to large scale causes and goals).

Great, those sound like fine qualities to have, but they only apply to World of Warcraft, right? You’d be surprised. Jane demos some games that she has deve

Despite enthusiastic support for the “Monsters in T-Shirts” campaign, we have decided that the best way to announce the launch of our new coloring book is to give away free, printable coloring book downloads to all our fans and friends.

This free coloring book might come in handy next time your grandchild is over and needs something to do that doesn’t involve “pony rides” and/or loud screaming…

Our newest artist, Emily Schnieder, did a superb job with this book and we are so proud to add it to our collection of customized kids books and are delighted to share it with all of you.  Just click on the picture below and it should open up the PDF in a new browser window. The black and white images are 8.5 by 11, specifically designed for easy printing on your home printer and paper.

Remember, this is just our prototype character, Olivia, and she’s been compressed for easier downloading.  If you want to insert your own child’s name (we have boy versions, too) into this or any of our high-resolution, professionally bound books… well, you know where to find us!

Tired of reading the same books over and over?  Making story time even more fun is easier than you think with story time flash cards.  A little while ago, I made a new deck of CLUE cards to accommodate an extra player to join Professor Plum, Miss Scarlet, and the gang: The Detective.  I realized that when you cut poster board into uniform rectangles and attach printed photos to them with a gluestick, you have a “Real” looking deck of whatever you please.

Students make flash cards all the time to help learn math, languages, and just about any other subject.  They are easy to make and best of all, though they stay the same, they recombine to be different every time!

Here’s what you’ll need:

• 1 poster board
• 1 glue stick
• Scissors
• Any group of images (use old magazines or print images from the internet)

Cut the poster board into uniform rectangles, trace a deck of cards if you like.  Paste the images onto one side and allow to dry.  Shuffle and “Deal”.

Dealing means to try to connect the cards into one story. Here is my story:

There once was a pair of men named Tony and Ynot.  Tony always did things forwards and Ynot always did things backwards.

One day a traveling circus arrived in Tony and Ynot’s town by boat.  They were excited to start their next show.

Unfortunately, the devil met Tony on his way to see the circus and offered him a little box.  Tony was scared and ran away.

He ran away but the devil changed into a little man and followed him everywhere he went on a donkey.  All Tony wanted was to go to the Circus.

Ynot decided that he wanted to go too and got in his upside down boat (Ynot did everything backwards) and made sure that his wife rode outside the boat (Ynot did everything backwards).

The circus performers started to unpack their unicycles and juggling pins.

Tired of reading the same books over and over?  Making story time even more fun is easier than you think with story time flash cards.  A little while ago, I made a new deck of CLUE cards to accommodate an extra player to join Professor Plum, Miss Scarlet, and the gang: The Detective.  I realized that when you cut poster board into uniform rectangles and attach printed photos to them with a gluestick, you have a “Real” looking deck of whatever you please.

Students make flash cards all the time to help learn math, languages, and just about any other subject.  They are easy to make and best of all, though they stay the same, they recombine to be different every time!

Here’s what you’ll need:

• 1 poster board
• 1 glue stick
• Scissors
• Any group of images (use old magazines or print images from the internet)

Cut the poster board into uniform rectangles, trace a deck of cards if you like.  Paste the images onto one side and allow to dry.  Shuffle and “Deal”.

Dealing means to try to connect the cards into one story. Here is my story:

There once was a pair of men named Tony and Ynot.  Tony always did things forwards and Ynot always did things backwards.

One day a traveling circus arrived in Tony and Ynot’s town by boat.  They were excited to start their next show.

Unfortunately, the devil met Tony on his way to see the circus and offered him a little box.  Tony was scared and ran away.

He ran away but the devil changed into a little man and followed him everywhere he went on a donkey.  All Tony wanted was to go to the Circus.

Ynot decided that he wanted to go too and got in his upside down boat (Ynot did everything backwards) and made sure that his wife rode outside the boat (Ynot did everything backwards).

The circus performers started to unpack their unicycles and juggling pins.

Tony g

Sara Michaels has worn glasses “all my life,” and she has insisted (and we’re delighted that she did) that parents be offered the option to give their children glasses in Ruler of Space.

Sarah says that as a child she was always drawn to characters in books that wore glasses and described them as “total confidence boosters”.

It has always been our goal to engage children’s interest in books by inserting them into the action with our personalized children’s books.  Before, kids with multicultural families might only have found characters similar to themselves in a couple books, and even then the book was likely to be about having a multicultural family.  In “If I Were Big“, your adventure is the story, and the fact that your family is made up of a white mom and a black dad is just the way things are.

Now we can say the same thing about kids with glasses.  In other books, most characters with glasses will at the very least remark upon their glasses and how other kids tease them for wearing them.  At the most, that conflict will drive the entire story.  I think a diet of such books, far from convincing a child of their self-worth, will focus them on how they must combat negative assumptions about themselves and their glasses.    

In Ruler of Space, wearing glasses isn’t what the story is about.  Ruling Space is!  You just happen to be wearing glasses like you always do and it doesn’t slow you down one bit.  You’re still awesome.  You’re still funny.  You’re still unique.  What gift could be more affirming than being judged the coolest person in the entire Galaxy, glasses and all?

Pitching in is not hard.  A few good friends of mine are abroad teaching and volunteering in foreign countries because they felt they had to “do something”, but you don’t have to go to China or Uzbekistan (bless you, Melanie, Jon, and Bryan) to make a real difference.

VolunteerMatch will help you find local opportunities for you to volunteer by entering your zip code and a keyword like “literacy” or “environment”.

Big Brothers Big Sisters is almost everywhere and all you need to do is hang out and be yourself.  PTA, Boy Scouts, the list goes on…

When I can, I volunteer at 826CHI, the Chicago chapter of a national literacy and tutoring organization.  It’s almost shameful how rewarded I feel from this supposedly altruistic act.  I feel fantastic after just a few hours of 2^nd grade spelling.  Can watching a couple episodes of “More to Love” make your whole week seem purposeful and joyous?  If not, I suggest that those couple hours can be better spent enhancing YOUR life, not to mention your community.

Pitch in!  You’ll thank me later.

Recently, MJM Books has become aware of the good work that Maple Star Colorado is doing to “assist young people to achieve social integration and prepare them to live in a democratic society by serving as an alternative to institutional care and providing opportunities to live in family settings.”

In plain English, they place foster kids who may not exactly feel loved, valued, or accepted into families dedicated to helping those children feel exactly that.

That is why we agreed to provide every young foster child with a personalized children’s book that will (1) show them they are special, and (2) give the child and their new caretakers an opportunity to bond and celebrate that specialness during story time.

These families are making up for lost time, and since we firmly believe that strong communities are built upon strong families, we hope to help in our small way.

I don’t want to sound overly patriotic, but I still get all misty when I hear JFK’s famous quote, “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.”  There are many other inspirational quotes regarding pitching in, but two of the best are “Be the change you want to see in the world” and “Just do it.”

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Pitching in is not hard.  A few good friends of mine are abroad teaching and volunteering in foreign countries because they felt they had to “do something”, but you don’t have to go to China or Uzbekistan (bless you, Melanie, Jon, and Bryan) to make a real difference.

VolunteerMatch will help you find local opportunities for you to volunteer by entering your zip code and a keyword like “literacy” or “environment”.

Big Brothers Big Sisters is almost everywhere and all you need to do is hang out and be yourself.  PTA, Boy Scouts, the list goes on…

When I can, I volunteer at 826CHI, the Chicago chapter of a national literacy and tutoring organization.  It’s almost shameful how rewarded I feel from this supposedly altruistic act.  I feel fantastic after just a few hours of 2^nd grade spelling.  Can watching a couple episodes of “More to Love” make your whole week seem purposeful and joyous?  If not, I suggest that those couple hours can be better spent enhancing YOUR life, not to mention your community.

Pitch in!  You’ll thank me later.

Recently, MJM Books has become aware of the good work that Maple Star Colorado is doing to “assist young people to achieve social integration and prepare them to live in a democratic society by serving as an alternative to institutional care and providing opportunities to live in family settings.”

In plain English, they place foster kids who may not exactly feel loved, valued, or accepted into families dedicated to helping those children feel exactly that.

That is why we agreed to provide every young foster child with a personalized children’s book that will (1) show them they are special, and (2) give the child and their new caretakers an opportunity to bond and celebrate that specialness during story time.

These families are making up for lost time, and since we firmly believe that strong communities are built upon strong families, we hope to help in our small way.

I don’t want to sound overly patriotic, but I still get all misty when I hear JFK’s famous quote, “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.”  There are many other inspirational quotes regarding pitching in, but two of the best are “Be the change you want to see in the world” and “Just do it.”

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Su Chin at ParentReviewers.com gave us a glowing review the other day that made us very proud.  What is most important for us is not that parents think the book is cute and that using recycled paper is neat; it is whether the kids find magic in their books and whether we are “Making Reading Fun”.

The concept behind personalized children’s books is not a new one.  Kids are just crazy about themselves.  They think they are just awesome, which is why a book about someone else (like Cinderella or Jack and Jill) is simply not as interesting as one that is about THEM.

When we go one step further and add illustrations of the child, they are “hooked” and suddenly kids who can’t sit still or think that books aren’t as interesting as TV get excited about the wonderful world of reading. 

Most touching to us have been testimonials about children who are just learning to read finding the motivation to learn and to be able to “read it all by myself” because of their importance to the story.

So why choose a Personalized Kids Book?  Children can relate more readily to them and that can help you convince your budding reader that there are amazing things to be found in books.  Sure it’s bit of a trick, like adding chickpeas to your muffin recipe, but it’s good for them!!!

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Growing up, I had a lot of girl friends (or, more accurately, friends who were girls).  As a consequence, I became quite good at hula hoop, hopscotch, jump rope and various hand clapping games. 

When I saw a certain cell phone hawking robot on TV playing jump rope with some children and singing, “My cousin Sally, sittin’ on…”   I asked my wife if she knew that rhyme and she said, “No, I always did, ‘Cinderella, dressed in yella…’” to which I responded…

Went downstairs to kiss a fella’

Made a mistake,

Kissed a snake,

How many doctors will it take?

1, 2, 3, 4…

I realized these rhymes are not the kind you find in books, but they endure in an oral tradition that many people think is extinct.  Here are some of my faves that I have never read, but remember anyhow because the rhyme and rhythm is burned deep in my brain.  The first was a great elimination hand slap game similar to hot potato, the last person in the circle when the rhyme gets to “Ker-plop” is out.

Down by the banks of the Hanky Panky,

Where the bullfrog jumps from bank to banky,

Eep, Op, over the top,

East side, West side, KER-plop!

This next hand clap song is a little racy and always caused a little tittering when it was sung.

Miss Suzy had a steamboat, the steamboat had a bell, (Ding! Ding!)

Miss Suzy went to heaven, the steamboat went to…

Hello, operator, please give me number nine,

And if you disconnect me,

I’ll kick your old…

Behind the ‘frigerator, there was a piece of glass,

Miss Suzy slipped upon it, and broke her little…

Ask me no more questions, I’ll tell you no more lies,

The boys are in the bathroom, zipping up their…

Flies are in the meadow, the bees are in the park,

Miss Suzy and her boyfriend are kissing in the Dark!

One reason our custom kids books are written in rhyme is that it is more fun to read aloud. Another benefit of rhyme is that it is easier to remember and to guess which words come next as your little one attempts to read the book “all by themselves”.  Maybe, like me with ‘Miss Suzy’, they’ll even remember the texts for years to come!

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Disney is now offering a refund to purchasers of the “Baby Einstein” videos.  They appear to be doing so under a looming class action suit from parents whose children did not grow up to discover make historical impact upon modern physics.

Most analysts agree that this recall is a tacit admission that the videos do not improve the mental growth of infants.  Some say that the videos may have even done quite the opposite.  The American Academy of Pediatrics suggests no television at all for children under the age of 2.

The creator, Julie Aigner-Clark, still walked away with a cool $20 million from her deal with Disney.  MJM Books is jealous!!!  Our products are books, and books have been proven to increase cognition and intellect.   Where’s our Disney deal?!

MJM Books recommends that anyone who has purchased a Baby Einstein DVD (or had one purchased for them), should return it for a refund and use that refund to buy a book.   In fact, let’s make it official.  IF YOU MAIL YOUR BABY EINSTEIN DVD TO US, WE’LL GIVE YOU ONE OF OUR CUSTOMIZABLE KIDS BOOKS, FREE!!!

   VS.  

Disney is now offering a refund to purchasers of the “Baby Einstein” videos.  They appear to be doing so under a looming class action suit from parents whose children did not grow up to discover make historical impact upon modern physics.

Most analysts agree that this recall is a tacit admission that the videos do not improve the mental growth of infants.  Some say that the videos may have even done quite the opposite.  The American Academy of Pediatrics suggests no television at all for children under the age of 2.

The creator, Julie Aigner-Clark, still walked away with a cool $20 million from her deal with Disney.  MJM Books is jealous!!!  Our products are books, and books have been proven to increase cognition and intellect.   Where’s our Disney deal?!

MJM Books recommends that anyone who has purchased a Baby Einstein DVD (or had one purchased for them), should return it for a refund and use that refund to buy a book.   In fact, let’s make it official.  IF YOU MAIL YOUR BABY EINSTEIN DVD TO US, WE’LL GIVE YOU ONE OF OUR CUSTOMIZABLE KIDS BOOKS, FREE!!!

We’ve pointed out different public domain children’s book sites like Project Guggenheim and the Rosetta Project before, but those might have been too dated and retro-awesome for some modern mommies, daddies and kiddies.

Over at ChildrensLibrary.org they have full color scans of hundreds of kid’s book titles that are a little more current than my favorite from the 19^th century, The Children’s Friend!

As you can see from the image above featuring a lovely dung beetle, the buttons at the top make flipping through (and even enlarging) the books easy, though it will never be the same as having a REAL book in your hands.  For the price, though, who can complain!

Another great reason to check this site out is the international translations.  A book written in both English and Spanish could be great study tool or presentation topic for your high schooler!

  NOM!

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