Yo-ho-ho and a stick of gum

Pirates are getting younger these days. I'm in New York for the Bryant Park Book Festival and, in helping spread the word for Edgar & Ellen's "High Wire", I've given out "Master of Mischief" stickers to many of the original mischief-makers of the high seas.

It's a good 15 days before Halloween--so the fact that the pirates look to be 11-year-olds with plastic cutlasses does nothing to dissuade me from thinking they're on shore leave from the bounding main.

Marketers alert! Start thinking pieces-of-eight, parrots, jolly rogers, walkable planks, eye-patches...we're entering a pirate period.

Let them eat bright big colors!

What drew so many kids' eyes to these over-sized "milk cartons" of Pepperidge Farm Goldfish?

A) The familiar shape looks funny in its giant size B) the crackers are shaped like smiling animals or C) they're brighly and unexpectedly colorful. Answer: AB&CCC. Kids think that color influences flavor and that brighter is better.

I'd be willing to bet that they prize the red "goldfish" most.

The quest for color is shared by kids everywhere, as demonstrated here by Pien from Amsterdam, who loves colors so much that she makes room for them right in her mouth.