HeyThereTweens

Since back-to-school season, Go-GURT has been running a digital music download promotion. Kids get codes and can download all kinds of tween faves: Demi Lovato, Miley Cyrus, Jonas Brothers, Jesse McCartney (all have been in the top 5) but "Hey there, Delilah" ranks number one, week after week. That's by a band from Lombard called the Plain White T's. It's not even new. What's your theory?

Emoticons

East Asians read emotions from the eye region, westerners tend to scan the whole face.

No wonder that emoticons have their own language. Check out how the mouth tells the whole story in the west. In the east it's a straight line.

West/East differences in Emoticons

Happy.... :-)....(^_^)
Sad........:-(....(;_;) or (T_T)
Surprise..:-o....(o.o)

AtlanticSponge

Atlantic Monthly takes a break from its erudite content to muse on the Atlantic's most popular denizen, SpongeBob Squarepants. We've been caught in his net for ten years.

They quote Rowland Semiotics, "Sponge Bob is one of the greatest believers of he American Dream," and end by saying "he will not succumb to complication. His corner of the world is all levity." They exhort the drained adult to embrace him and salute his yellow flag. "It's a sign of life."

In 2001, I noticed Edinborough U. students watching a show I'd considered to be a US kid phenomenon. That was the first time I wrote about SpongeBob.

The first month of this blog included him, too. Happy 10th birthday, Sponge!

EasterDrawing

Here's how you gained admission to the jelly bean hunt at my house this week: draw an Easter drawing with sidewalk chalk. An impromptu collaboration produced the "Easter Emu."

HannaFan

Yesterday, I saw a little girl jumping and cheering at the sight of Hannah Montana in the Mich. Ave. Disney Store window. Her older brother's sympathetic comment was, "I'ma kill you if I hear anymore about Hanna Montana." Her mother seemed interested though. Today another nice mom, Raleigh, from Denver, posted this little girl's review of the movie, "Mom that was the BEST movie ever!"

BoysShop

These pics by Ali Pohn make one thing clear. Boys shop with their hands. Want to get a boy's attention? Give him something to probe, pound or poke.

MonkeyToys

Izzy pointed me to an ingenious Texas A&M study on Vervet Monkeys and toy choice. As with humans, female monkeys tend to choose dolls, male monkeys tend to choose trucks.

PrincessParade

Little Caroline can take class called "Princess Ballet--and you can see why that's offered. Look what she lugs in her backpack: a posse of princesses. Later she found one more figure at the bottom, a lone prince.

You can keep your handsome prince. I put my chips on the princess square.

Grafitti is forever

Iesha lives in a Puerto Rican neighborhood on Chicago's west side. Yesterday, while walking by Lincoln Park's St. Clement's church, I asked her if she'd like to look inside.

At first she hung back, but when we came out she said she'd liked it, "Especially the beautiful graffiti around the ceiling."

Mosaic scriptures circle the golden dome as graffiti circles the el trains. To Iesha, graffiti doesn't deface, but embellishes.

Evil villains and bland good guys

Villains in children's stories have fangs, warts, claws, arched eyebrows, sharp noses--all kinds of specificity. Good guys, by contrast, are undifferentiated. That's because children have a clearer sense of the world around them than of their own identities. Consequently, they identify with undifferentiated characters.