Howdy Readers! The Weekend was busy busy busy so instead we’ll have an extra jam packed Wednesday Reads. Also it is National Hot Dog Day… Mmmmmmmm…
What happens when the Scooby Gangs grows up? Check out Edgar Cantero’s new novel Meddling Kids to find out.
Here’s a new candidate for World’s Worst Mom.
On the other hand here’s a candidate for World’s Best Mom… To the man who felt it necessary to question my son in the bathroom at IHOP.
Sesame Street has added a new Muppet to their show for Afghan children Baghch-e-Simsim (Sesame Garden,) specifically to address the issue of respect for women.
Zeerak, whose name means Smart in Afghanistan’s two official languages, is a four-year-old boy who enjoys studying and learning. He joins his six-year-old sister Zari, whose name means Shimmering, on Afghanistan’s version of the show, Baghch-e-Simsim (Sesame Garden).
Both muppets wear traditional Afghan clothing – baggy trousers and a long embroidered shirt known as a shalwar kameez for Zeerak, and colourful native dresses and a cream-coloured hijab for Zari. They join the rest of the show’s multicultural line-up, which includes puppets specially created for local versions of the program in Bangladesh, Egypt and India.
Massood Sanjer, the head of Tolo TV, which broadcasts the program in Afghanistan, said that after the overwhelmingly positive response to Zari from both parents and children, the goal was to create a boy character to emphasise the importance of gender equality and education in a country where the vast majority of girls don’t go to school and the literacy rate for women is among the lowest in the world.
Have you ever wondered what parenting would be like from the perspective of a Lego Dad? Neither have I but someone did and put the result on Instagram.
David Burr Gerard talks about the book that sparked his love of literature, the children’s classic The Monster at the End of This Book, starring lovable furry old Grover.
When we say that drama is about conflict, we mean, in part, that readers want terrible things to befall the people we read about; if they don’t, we rightly complain that nothing is happening, and only then do we do what Grover has asked us to do, and stop turning the pages. I liked that The Monster at the End of the Book treated me as grown-up enough to let me in on that.
This young artist had the perfect response when school officials asked him to tone down his big project exploring gender and sexuality. He ignored them and had the highest marks in his class!
Congress is trying to write trans people out of civil rights protections! Bad Congress!
Last week Teen Vogue published an awesome guide to anal sex, filling a giant hole in our teens sex education. Digital editor Phillip Picardi then went to twitter to explain how important that kind of information would have been to him as a gay teen in an epic Tweetstorm.
Finally, Betsy DeVos, Secretary of Education and Wicked Witch of the Midwest thinks that too many people have been treated unfairly under Obama Era rules on campus sexual assault. Which people? The men people of course.
Eli Erlick thinks you should know more about early transitioning for trans youth. So now you can know that.
https://youtu.be/NypWr3Qlz44
Featured Image Credit: Bodacious Hot Dogs from The Senate in Cincinnati. Try the Duck Fat Fries…
