The Silver Surfer

This Silver Surfer cartoon is so cool. I enjoy it as an adult and I would have peed my pants over it back when when I was a comic book fanatic eleven year old. Back then, in the 1970's, I'd be lucky to get a brief glimpse of the Surfer maybe once a year in the pages of comic books. He was the most exciting of the marvel characters--I longed for all things cosmic! Now-- in this future I call my adulthood--the things I longed for as a boy are freely available. Silver Surfer cartoons, available whenever I want them. Endless reprints of the Kirby/Lee classics, all at my local library and bookstore. Quality live action movies about my favorite heroes. It's all so easy now. All 13 episodes of this great cartoon are up on Utube. Hopefully they'll come out on DVD some day. What I've posted here is part 1 of episode 1--if you like this you need to find part 2 of episode one--and, in fact, the origin story goes on for the first three episodes. From there the Surfer continues on from one wacky cosmic adventure to another throughout the 13 episodes...

What makes a kid love a book?

I'm reading a book with a group of 4th graders. Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing. They love it! But the main thing they love about it is the turtle, named Dribble, who is mentioned on the first page of the book and who is mentioned every now and then throughout the narrative. The turtle is a minor part of book (so far, anyway)--but the kids love the book because of Dribble. Every time the turtle pops up they get all excited and talk about what a great book we're reading. Without Dribble the turtle I'm not sure this particular group of boys would care much about the book.