60 years ago this month, the Ohio Art Company introduced the world to the Etch A Sketch, a remarkable (and sometimes remarkably frustrating) drawing toy. The concept was simple: one knob moved the stylus left and right, and the other knob moved the stylus up and down. Combine the two knobs, and you could draw anything (in one continuous line, of course)! That was easier said than done, of course, and many of us grew up drawing variations of stairs and boxes before turning the Etch A Sketch over and shaking it up to erase it.

I grew up playing with Etch A Sketches, though I can’t remember if I ever owned one myself as a kid. I particularly liked drawing what I called “mazes”: space-filling patterns made entirely of horizontal and vertical lines. I rediscovered the toy during college, when I discovered I had a knack for drawing on them, and it’s been my silly party trick ever since. I’ve since made some permanent Etch A Sketch drawings, and I’ve also done drawings during Inktober that I called my Etchtober series.

This year, to celebrate the anniversary, Spin Master (who acquired Etch A Sketch in 2016) has created several special limited editions. They sent me two of them to try out: the NASA edition and the Diamond Anniversary edition.

The NASA edition has a black frame, printed with an image showing NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) rocket on the left, and an astronaut on the right, with a starry expanse across the top and bottom. The knobs are moon-shaped: rounded domes with craters. NASA’s 60th anniversary was in 2018 and the 50th anniversary of the moon landing was last year, but earlier this year we also witnessed an important date in space exploration: the successful launch of SpaceX’s first crewed mission. I drew a picture of astronauts Robert Behnken and Douglas Hurley to celebrate. The one detail I didn’t really care for is that there’s an “Etch A Sketch 60th” logo printed at the top right corner of the screen. At first when I saw it in the package, I assumed it was printed on the little plastic cover that has the constellation “drawing” for display, but it’s actually on the Etch A Sketch screen itself.

The Diamond Anniversary edition is pretty fancy! Unlike the rest of the anniversary editions, this version actually uses a special mold for the black frame, giving it a beveled surface that extends around the edges of the toy as well. The knobs are beveled like giant diamonds as well, with a combination of silver and clear plastic. Over the screen itself, there’s also a glittery plastic film that sparkles in the light. The glitter can make the lines a little less sharp and dark than a regular Etch A Sketch, but it’s a neat effect. On the top of the frame, the embossed Etch A Sketch logo also has the dates “1960–2020” and a diamond “60th” icon next to it—I’m glad that this one doesn’t have the words printed on the screen itself.

There are three other editions as well: Stan Lee, featuring a cartoon Stan on the frame and on the knobs; Rubik’s Cube, with colorful cubes on the frame and square-shaped knobs, and Monopoly, with the monopoly board as the frame, including the “Go” and “Go to Jail” spaces as the knobs themselves. They’re all pretty cute, though I do wonder how well I’d be able to draw with the square knobs. All of them are available exclusively from Walmart, and they all cost $19.96 except for the Diamond Anniversary edition, which is $29.96.

If you’re a fan of Etch a Sketch (or, I suppose, Stan Lee or Rubik’s Cube or NASA or Monopoly), these editions are a fun way to celebrate! I wish they were available somewhere other than Walmart, but I’ve been told that these are limited and there aren’t plans to manufacture more once they’re sold out.

Happy anniversary, Etch A Sketch! Here’s to another 60 years of battery-free screen time!

Tomorrow, October 11th, is National Coming Out Day. This day is near and dear to much of the LGBTQIA+ community, because it marks so many of our own anniversaries for revealing our true selves. Please enjoy these 10 things to know about this holiday.

1: October 11th is National Coming Out Day.

This is a day where we, as a country, open our hearts (and ears) to hear the truth of who our friends and family may be. Whether someone is gay/lesbian/bisexual/asexual/etc. or trans/nonbinary/etc., this is a day to celebrate and include that person.

I came out on National Coming Out Day 2005. It was one of the hardest days in my life, but also one of the most joyous. This day is an anniversary for me, and it’s one I celebrate each year by inviting my friends and family to be exactly who they are, rather than what they think they should be.

2: You don’t have to come out!

This one is pretty self-explanatory. If the world isn’t ready for the full you, or you’re not sure you’re ready to share your whole self, wait until another time. If National Coming Out Day is too much pressure, just wait until the time feels right. I only came out on this day because I felt empowered to. That’s the whole idea – empowerment. It’s a day for liberation from silent oppression.

3: Coming out is both difficult and (usually) rewarding.

It’s never easy to learn someone isn’t who you thought they were. We have to adjust our perception, our assumptions, and (for good or ill) our relationships. Friendships can flourish or shatter when you come out. It’s the good times that we hope for. When they happen, it makes everything worthwhile.

When I came out, my social circle fractured. I lost “friends” I’d known since junior high. My work relationships became strained and awkward after news reached my job. On the other hand, my remaining friendships became stronger. I forged bonds that remain to this day because I trusted my friends with who I am, and they trusted me in return. I no longer miss the friends I lost. I just revel in the relationships which became stronger.

4: You aren’t alone.

Having a secret is hard, especially a big secret. It can make you feel like you’re alone and that nobody understands. We do understand. The LGBTQIA+ community is enormous. We’ve all been through the coming out experience one way or another. We’re here for you when you need an ear. There are hotlines and support groups and every other kind of resource you might need. While we don’t agree on everything, and there are jerks in every group of people, the LGBTQIA+ community has friends for everyone, especially our own.

• GLAAD has a great resource list to get you started.
• The CDC has a collection of resources for LGBT youth, since LGBTQIA+ youth have different risk factors and health concerns.
• The National LGBT Health Education Center focuses on education, but they have a great list of resources.
• The GLBT National Youth Talkline (for folks under 25) is 1-800-246-PRIDE.
• The GLBT National Hotline (for adults) is 1-888-843-4564 (or email: help@GLBThotline.org).

5: Allies don’t come out.

This is not a day for allies to shout “I accept gay people, look at meeeee!” Don’t do it. Your voice as an ally isn’t what is needed. Allies should celebrate this day by listening to their friend(s) if and when they choose to come out. When someone “comes out” as an ally, they are demonstrating that acceptance isn’t universal. If you suspect someone in your social and familial circle(s) is LGBTQIA+, make yourself available and assure them that you’ll love them no matter what. That is the most powerful thing an ally can do.

6: Nobody “owes you” a coming-out moment.

I had a friend who was insulted that I didn’t come out to her first, and that coming out to her felt anti-climactic. No. Just – no. If someone comes out, it’s not an easy thing, or a thing they take lightly. If they come out to you casually, it means they trust you to not judge them. If there’s a “big moment” then they are probably afraid of what your reaction will be.

7: You should never “out” someone, without explicit permission.

Not on this day or any other. An example: Your friend Bob says to you, “Karen, you can tell your husband that I’m gay.” You are now empowered, as an ally and loved one, to tell your husband that Bob is gay. This doesn’t empower you to tell your children, your sister, your parents, and it certainly doesn’t empower you to tell your social circle.

I live very openly. I am genderqueer and bisexual. I talk about this early on in friendships so that there’s no awkward coming out later. It has the added benefit of weeding out any bigots before I invest too much energy in them. My family and friends all have permission to talk about me with whomever they like, and that’s fine. But if a reader of this post were to go find me on Twitter and shout from the rooftops that I’m gay, that would be inappropriate, because I haven’t given you, the reader, explicit permission to out me.

8: Coming out isn’t the same experience for everyone.

Your coming out might look like bringing your boyfriend over for dinner. It might be a more drama-laden occasion. My mother drove off the side of the road, she was so discombobulated. I never came out to my father. I just let the news reach him through family, because I didn’t want the confrontation. I came out to each of my friends and family in a unique way, because I had a unique relationship with each of them.

9: Coming out can still be dangerous.

Consider carefully whether it is safe for you to come out. There are places around the world, in every country, where it is still a risk to come out. You can risk social status, relationships, even your physical and mental health. Some people lose vital supports, such as being kicked out of their home when they come out to their parents, or their landlord finding out and kicking them out. Others lose their lives in more violent discrimination.

The painful truth is that you never know how someone will react when you come out. Always have a plan for how to react if things go south. I’m saddened that I have to give this advice, but these things still happen, despite the progress we’ve made over the last few decades.

10: Coming out can be an ongoing process.

I come out again regularly. Whether this is new friends, a new job, or something else, I have to come out to people all the time. The method evolves, too. I used to fearfully reveal my secret, hoping to not be judged. These days, I simply talk openly about my relationships, particularly my ex-boyfriends, and let the conversation move on. This doesn’t make it easier for me. I still struggle with the fear of rejection and persecution. It does help the social aspect of it, though. Instead of investing a lot of social and emotional energy into someone only to learn that they’re a bigot, I get it out of the way in advance.

I wish there were no more bigots, and that I could be close friends with all of the interesting people I meet. Unfortunately, my fear of rejection and persecution is well founded and still a very real consideration. It’s no longer a consideration as to whether I should come out, though. I just do it, and move on.

11: People of color are at an increased risk of backlash and violence.

I want to give a special shout-out to the members of our community who are people of color. The LGBTQIA+ community loves you and recognizes that you are our most vulnerable members. Being LGBTQIA+ and a person of color significantly increases the danger of being persecuted and losing your community. We are here for you. That’s why the Pride Flag has the new bands of black and brown. We want you to know that we recognize you and want you to be your true self with us.

12: We still need awareness and acceptance from the outside world.

Having a holiday, the right to marry, and some social acceptance of our identities aren’t enough. We still need better education, both within the community and the outside world. There are many questions that need answers, and no single member of our community can answer every question. Google is your friend, as are Tumblr, Facebook, Twitter, and other social media platforms that allow you to connect to feeds and groups that foster community among allies and LGBTQIA+ people. They can be massively educational, even if you don’t know what to say, or what questions to ask at first.

We need education in schools. We still have children who kill themselves over their gender or sexual identity, and I firmly believe that better education of LGBTQIA+ issues in schools will dramatically decrease these devastating and unnecessary deaths.

Following up from last week’s books for Women’s History Month, here are several more stories about women. As always, I find myself with more books to read than I can finish, but here are the ones I’ve gotten to so far!

Her Fearless Run: Kathrine Switzer’s Historic Boston Marathon by Kim Chaffee, illustrated by Ellen Rooney

Kathrine Switzer always loved running, even at a time when many people thought girls were too weak or fragile for sports. She later joined men’s running teams in college because there wasn’t a women’s running team. When she learned about the Boston Marathon, she knew she had to try it. Her application to the 1967 Boston Marathon was accepted and she received a number—the first time a woman ran the Boston Marathon with a number—because officials had just assumed that “K.V. Switzer” was a man. They tried to stop her once they saw her running, but she completed the marathon, and went on to run over thirty-five marathons.

This book shares the story of Switzer’s love of running, up to her triumphant moment finishing her first marathon; you have to read the Author’s Note to find out some more details, like the fact that she was then expelled from the Amateur Athletic Union, or that she later organized the first Avon International Women’s Marathon. Switzer’s first marathon run was just a year after Bobbi Gibb snuck into the race (without a number), a story that was told in Girl Running (see this Stack Overflow).

Gloria Takes a Stand by Jessica M. Rinker, illustrated by Daria Peoples-Riley

Gloria Steinem is a feminist icon, which also means she’s been a controversial figure. This book takes a look at her life starting from her early childhood up until the present day. It’s interesting to see the various places and ways that she learned about the world, the challenges she faced, and that paths that she took throughout her life. She fought for women’s rights, but was also involved in the civil rights movement, particularly in making sure that women of color were also heard. Whether you agree with all of her views or not, it’s a thought-provoking look at a woman who challenged the status quo.

A Celebration of Beatrix Potter: Art and Letters

This book celebrated Beatrix Potter’s 150th birthday … though I’m two years late myself. Thirty-two artists contributed their own memories and illustrations to this book, which also includes some of Potter’s stories and illustrations throughout the book. While this, I suppose isn’t technically history, I included it because of the way that Potter clearly influenced so many children’s book illustrators with her work.

Have You Heard About Lady Bird? Poems About Our First Ladies by Marilyn Singer, illustrated by Nancy Carpenter

If you enjoyed the book about First Ladies in last week’s Stack Overflow, here’s another one: in verse! Organized in chronological order by presidents, each First Lady from Martha Washington to Melania Trump gets a poem to herself (some short, some longer) that highlights what she was known for. The poems have various types of meter and rhyme, so you don’t get stuck in iambic pentameter for 45 poems, which is nice—though it also means I stumbled a little the first time through. The illustrations are well done, though it does seem like they start off a little more cartoony and end up more realistic—probably based on the availability of reference photos, I would guess. The back of the book includes brief biographies of each woman, plus a quotation (usually from the First Lady herself, but occasionally from others). This book is a follow-up to Rutherford B., Who Was He?, a collection of poems about the presidents.

When You Grow Up to Vote by Eleanor Roosevelt with Michelle Markel, illustrated by Grace Lin

Speaking of First Ladies, this book is an updated version of Eleanor Roosevelt’s 1932 book that explains in a kid-friendly way how the government works. Despite the title, the book doesn’t actually begin with voting. Instead, it starts in what might seem to be an unusual place: firefighters. Then there are police, then garbage collectors, and then the mayor (and city councils), who are responsible for managing things like fire departments and police departments. After that, it explains how governments are organized—city, county, state, and national—and then how people come to be in the various positions, from senators and representatives to judges to secretaries to the president. Then, finally, after you’ve seen how these pieces fit together, there’s a message about voting.

Eleanor Roosevelt felt it was important for kids to understand how the government works, so that when they became voting adults, they would have both a sense of responsibility and the knowledge to make wise decisions. This book (which has been modernized and updated by Michelle Markel) is a great place to start, and Grace Lin’s illustrations are a nice addition as well.

Becoming Madeleine by Charlotte Jones Voiklis and Léna Roy

Becoming Madeleine is a biography of Madeleine L’Engle, written by her granddaughters. It’s written at a middle grade level, and begins with a little bit about L’Engle’s parents and marriage, up through the publication of A Wrinkle in Time and its reception. The book includes photographs and reproductions of correspondence and journal entries, so that you get to hear L’Engle tell parts of the story in her own voice. It’s clear that Voiklis and Roy really loved their grandmother, but they’re also not afraid to write about some of her faults, either.

I was pleased to see a photo of L’Engle with Touché, the dog who “wrote” the picture book The Other Dog (mentioned in last week’s column); there’s a brief story about Touché but then not much more, alas. For kids (or adults) who are fans of A Wrinkle in Time, this book is a window into the circumstances that made L’Engle who she was.

The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage by Sydney Padua

I, uh, meant to read this when it was first published in 2015, which also happened to be Ada Lovelace’s 200th birthday … and clearly I missed it by several years. Well, I’ve finally gotten around to reading it and every bit of it is wonderful, from the story behind the comic to the comic itself to the curated selection of primary sources in the appendix.

Ada Lovelace is often called the first computer programmer, because she wrote programs for Charles Babbage’s Analytical Engine. The catch is that this Analytical Engine was never actually constructed: Ada Lovelace died at age 36, and Charles Babbage never stopped tinkering with his design. Sydney Padua was encouraged by a friend to draw a webcomic about Ada Lovelace, became fascinated with their story, and felt that Lovelace and Babbage deserved a second life. So she created a “pocket universe” in which Lovelace survived, Babbage completed his vast steam-powered computer, and the two of them were charged by the Queen to fight crime … though their definitions of “crime” may be a bit stretched at times.

The book is thoroughly—I might even say obsessively—researched; even though the plot is fiction, a lot of the dialogue is taken from letters and books. Lovelace and Babbage encounter many famous contemporaries (many of whom interacted with Babbage in real life), and go on a lot of curious adventures. The comic strip includes entertaining and illuminating footnotes, which in turn have endnotes … which occasionally have footnotes of their own! There are also a few instances where the characters interact with the footnotes.

Padua even has an extensive explanation of the Analytical Engine: when she went looking for a visual explanation of how it worked, she was surprised to find that nobody had ever made a visualization of the whole thing, so she drew it herself. The subsequent breakdown of how the machine would have worked (if Babbage had ever gotten around to building it) is really fascinating.

The book touches on a lot of different subjects pertaining to math and computing: finances, Boolean logic, four-dimensional geometry, and even automated spell-checking. But it also paints a vivid picture of both of its main characters, who both led incredible, noteworthy lives. I had a blast reading this book, and highly recommend it (four years late). My only hesitation about including it in this column is that most of the source material is about Babbage rather than Lovelace, for several reasons (among them, that Lovelace was a woman and that she died young).

Prison Island by Colleen Frakes

McNeil Island in Puget Sound was home to a prison for roughly 130 years, and when it closed in 2011 it was the last prison in the United States that was only accessible by water or air. Colleen Frakes and her family lived on the island for about a decade, and this comic book is a memoir of her time there. The book jumps back and forth between her time living on the island and the present, when she returned to the island with her family for the closing ceremonies.

It’s an interesting story, perhaps as much because living on an island presented certain difficulties as because there was a prison there. There were a few prison escapes in their time there, but it’s only a small part of the story. Taking the ferry to the mainland for school, the difficulties of ordering pizza, and then the odd feeling (when the island closed) of seeing homes and community centers that were simply abandoned, some left unlocked.

Embroideries by Marjane Satrapi

Marjane Satrapi is well-known for her 2-part graphic autobiography Persepolis, which described her childhood growing up in Iran. It’s an unflinching look at life during the Islamic Revolution, particularly the way that it affected women and girls. Embroideries also portrays the lives of Iranian women, but this time with a focus on a different topic: their sex lives. Satrapi sets the scene with her grandmother, mother, and various aunts and neighbors and friends, having an afternoon drinking tea and talking. The women share stories about themselves and others: how the grandmother helped a friend fake her virginity on her wedding night (with some absurd results), comparing notes about European men, affairs and failed marriages, and more. This book, unlike Persepolis, is intended for adult readers, and offers a different sort of glimpse into life in Iran. Some stories will seem familiar and almost universal, like a debate between marrying for love or marrying for convenience; others feel specific to these women in this place at this time. At any rate, it’s entertaining and illuminating.

My Current Stack

I wish I had even more time, but in my stack I’ve got a few other biographies of authors, a graphic novel about Zora Neal Hurston, and a middle grade book about how American women won the right to vote. Maybe next week! In the meantime, here’s what else I’ve been reading this week.

I picked up the first volume of Man-Eaters by Chelsea Cain et al. at the store; I’d heard some good things about it (including from GeekMom writer K. Tilden Frost, in case you don’t mind some spoilers), but I hadn’t read it before. The brief synopsis is that toxoplasmosis has mutated, causing some girls to turn into giant, vicious cats when they menstruate. The government responded by spiking water with estrogen to prevent menstruation, and there’s also a specialized Strategic Cat Apprehension Team (SCAT) that responds to big cat incidents. Volume 1 collects the first four issues, so it’s still sort of building out the world and setting up the story, but there are some interesting (though not always surprising) reveals along the way. There’s also a lot of material from Estro Corp, because of course somebody’s making a lot of money from this crisis—there are ads for all of Estro Corp’s products (usually for men and boys, who need to be protected from those scary, unpredictable girls), and the fourth issue is actually a copy of their magazine Cat Fight rather than the continuation of the comic book story. It’s scathing, and really funny.

I also read Vei (Book 1) by Sara B. Elfgren and Karl Johnsson, a reimagining of Norse mythology that features the familiar Norse gods, but as antagonists to the people of Jotunheim, who worship the giant Jotuns. It’s gorgeously illustrated and has that strange familiar-unfamiliar feeling to it, where you recognize bits and pieces but they’re arranged in a different way. More on this one in the future.

And currently I’m reading Crowded by Christopher Sebela et al., another comic book I picked up at the store on a whim. It’s set in the future, with a gig economy that has extended beyond ride-sharing and home-sharing to pretty much all aspects of life. Crowdfunding has also gotten darker: a site called Reapr allows people to contribute to a hit-job campaign, and Charlotte Ellison has just found herself the target of one. She hires a protector (from the Dfend app, of course), but she’s not very good at following directions. I haven’t finished it yet, but I’m enjoying the skewering of social media and the internet economy.

Happy reading!

Disclosure: Except where noted otherwise, I received review copies of the books in this column.

March is Women’s History Month, and while it’s never a bad time to read about inspiring women, I wanted to devote one of my Stack Overflow columns this month to stories about women.

Wilma’s Way Home: The Life of Wilma Mankiller by Doreen Rappaport, illustrated by Linda Kukuk

Wilma Mankiller was the first woman chief of the Cherokee Nation, and her leadership helped to empower the Cherokee people. This picture book tells her story, from her childhood in Oklahoma and San Francisco to the beginnings of her activism to her work as chief. There’s also a brief explanation of the Trail of Tears, explaining how Native Americans had been forcibly removed from their lands in the past, and linking it to the forced relocation of Wilma’s family when she was young. I really didn’t know that much about Wilma Mankiller before reading this book, so I appreciated this history lesson for myself!

The Other Dog by Madeleine L’Engle

This picture book has a funny story behind it, because it is about Madeleine L’Engle and written by her, but it’s from the point of view of her dog, Touché. The story itself was written after L’Engle’s first daughter, Josephine, was born—and she is the “other dog” in the title. As Touché tells it, this new “Jo-dog” is very bizarre: she needs to be fed several times, doesn’t get to go out for walks, and has to sleep in a froufrou bed. But, eventually, Touché warms up to the new dog, particularly since it seems very attentive to whatever Touché has to say.

And, despite the fact that the book does focus a lot on Touché, it does tell a bit of the story of L’Engle herself. The Author’s Note at the back gives even more context, giving a glimpse of L’Engle’s life before she’d become the well-known author of the Wrinkle in Time series.

Rebel Voices: The Global Fight for Women’s Equality and the Right to Vote by Eve Lloyd Knight and Louise Kay Stewart

This boldly illustrated book traces the history of women’s voting rights, highlighting key figures who championed the cause. The book is arranged roughly chronologically, jumping from country to country in the order that women gained the right to vote; in some cases it also explains when minorities were granted voting rights as well, because many times those didn’t come at the same time.

The illustrations are spattery, poster-like artwork that often look like posters, and they’re really stunning. I learned a lot from reading this book, particularly about the wide range of tactics that suffragists used, from petitions to marches to riots. In some instances, the fact that women were already working alongside men in particular jobs—often during times of war—that helped make the case for equality. In others, it was the sheer number of determined women who wouldn’t take “no” for an answer. Even so, the amount of time it often took between the initial demands and when voting rights were finally granted was sometimes extremely long.

Of course, the right to vote doesn’t immediately bring equality on other fronts, but it’s a start. This book is both an inspiration and a challenge, to continue making progress both at home and abroad.

Anne Frank’s Diary: The Graphic Adaptation by Ari Folman, illustrated by David Polonsky

Here’s a confession: I actually haven’t read Diary of a Young Girl—somehow it was never on a school reading list when I was growing up, and I never picked it up as an adult as non-required reading. So although I knew who Anne Frank was and have certainly heard about her story, I had never actually read it in her own words, nor gotten a lot of the details. This graphic adaptation is abridged, because the entire book would have been too much to illustrate in this form, but Folman worked to capture some of the significant moments, while also preserving some day-to-day entries that showed Anne’s humor and wit. I was struck by the juxtaposition of the stressful moments of survival and hiding with more banal moments about day-to-day life.

The illustrations are superb, and one of the reasons is the way that things are not always illustrated completely literally. When Anne imagines her fellow Jews in work camps, the illustration is styled to look a little like Egyptians working on pyramids; when she describes the residents of the Annex eating supper, the illustration shows them all as different animals. Some sections reproduce entire entries with just some background illustration, as a way to let her voice really shine through. While I don’t consider this a substitute for reading the book it’s based on, it is an excellent, thoughtfully made introduction, and I highly recommend it.

Hidden by Loïc Dauvillier, Marc Lizano, and Greg Salsedo

While this graphic novel is fictional, I think it’s a fitting pairing with Anne Frank’s Diary. Dounia Cohen tells her granddaughter about her childhood in France during World War II, when the French government began to collaborate with Nazi occupiers. When Dounia’s parents were arrested, they hid Dounia in an armoire, where she was discovered by neighbors and then hidden from the Nazis.

What makes this book particularly significant is that, since Dounia is telling the story to her young granddaughter, the events of the Holocaust are told in a way that is intended for young children to read. That doesn’t make it easy, and there are certainly things that are frightening and disturbing, but it also focuses on the people who helped Dounia and her family. Young kids have the capacity to be kind or cruel, and this book doesn’t hide the prejudice that some had toward the Jews, but it also shows how we are able to stand up against injustice.

How to Build a Hug: Temple Grandin and Her Amazing Squeeze Machine by Amy Guglielmo and Jacqueline Tourville, illustrated by Giselle Potter

Temple Grandin is known for her work with animal behavior and for speaking about autism, which wasn’t well understood when she was a child. She was particularly sensitive to touch, and found it very difficult to be hugged, even though she wanted to experience the comfort that others seemed to get from hugs. Eventually, she invented a “hug machine,” inspired by the squeeze chutes used to help cows stay calm during exams, and she discovered that being able to control the timing and pressure of the hug made it work—and even that it eventually allowed her to enjoy hugs from people as well. Her hug machine has inspired devices that are used for autistic people now.

This picture book tells Grandin’s story in a way that is easy for kids to understand, explaining what her autism was like, both her hypersensitivities and the way that her inventive mind looked at the world. It’s interesting that the story portion of the book doesn’t even use the word “autism”: instead of using a label, it just describes what Grandin was like. The Authors’ Note at the end gives a little more of her background and how her autism manifested, as well as more about her work with animals.

Secret Engineer: How Emily Roebling Built the Brooklyn Bridge by Rachel Dougherty

The Brooklyn Bridge was built using a new technique learned from Europe: caissons, large inverted boxes that captured air inside them so that workers could excavate at the bottom of the river. When Washington Roebling, who took on the building of the bridge from his father, got caisson sickness (now known as “the bends”), he was unable to continue work. Emily Roebling, his wife, took over as his eyes and ears, reading construction reports to Washington and writing letters and instructions that he dictated. Uncomfortable with the messages that she didn’t entirely understand, she began to study bridge engineering herself, and continued to oversee and champion the project since Washington remained ill during construction.

I hadn’t known anything at all about Emily Roebling before this book, and had only known a little bit about the Brooklyn Bridge’s construction. I like the way that the book explains the bridge construction with diagrams and illustrations, and it’s an inspiring story about a woman who wouldn’t give in to societal pressure about what she could and couldn’t do.

Little Dreamers: Visionary Women Around the World by Vashti Harrison

Little Dreamers is a follow-up to Harrison’s Little Leaders, which focused on Black women (mentioned in this Stack Overflow). This one features 40 more stories about women from around the world, from well-known names like painter Frida Kahlo to many that were new to me, like virologist Flossie Wong-Staal. Each story is just a single page long, accompanied by an illustration. The faces are all mostly the same (a few are in profile), using the same features and closed eyes, but each one is customized by the clothing and a background that includes a lot of little details taken from that woman’s story.

Limitless: 24 Remarkable American Women of Vision, Grit, and Guts by Leah Tinari

Leah Tinari was inspired to make these portraits after making posters of US Presidents for her son: “I had just spent months painting and researching men and only men.” When Carrie Fisher passed away shortly after that, she made a portrait of Carrie Fisher, which then kicked off this project to paint other iconic women. (The restriction to American women for this project seems to be primarily as as parallel to the presidential portraits.)

Each portrait, like Carrie Fisher’s on the cover, is in black and white with one highlight color, surrounded by stenciled text highlighting the subject’s passions, accomplishments, or quotes. The portraits are paired with a quote—usually by the woman, but sometimes from somebody else close to them. The subjects come from various fields: actors and writers, cooks and hoteliers, singers and scientists.

A section at the back has a list of the women, with their birth and death dates, along with a powerful moment for each one. I really liked the striking portraits, which would make great posters. The book is primarily the artwork, though, without as many details about each of the subjects.

The Story of Barbie and the Woman Who Created Her by Cindy Eagan, illustrated by Amy June Bates

When I think of Barbie dolls, I have to admit that mostly what comes to mind is debates about unrealistic body image and the “pink aisle” at the toy store. But Barbie’s origins are actually inspiring: Ruth Handler noticed her daughter playing with paper dolls of grown-ups rather than her baby dolls, and pitched the idea of a doll who looked like a teenager instead of a baby. Mattel rejected the idea, but Handler decided to push ahead anyway. When Barbie was introduced at the 1959 To Fair, she was a hit.

Handler’s goal was to create a doll that let girls see themselves as adults, in roles that they dreamed of having one day. Of course, some of those careers may seem like gender stereotypes now, but Barbie’s career aspirations advanced with the times, too. And, while my own kids have never really gotten into Barbie dolls, I did appreciate this lesson about Barbie’s history, and about her forward-thinking creator. The illustrations for the book have a 1950s vibe and are excellent.

What’s the Big Deal About First Ladies by Ruby Shamir, illustrated by Matt Faulkner

This book was actually published back in 2017 and I’ve just missed covering it. Starting with a quick introduction that explains who the first lady is (not all of them have been the president’s wife!), the book explains what the first lady’s job is, what it’s like living in the White House, and provides lots of fun facts about the things that various first ladies have done throughout American history. Scattered throughout the book are little text boxes filled with trivia, some funny and some serious. The book explains how being the first lady is an important job, one that many people may not really think about that much compared to the presidency, and shows how first ladies have made a big difference.

Reach Higher: An Inspiring Photo Collection of First Lady Michelle Obama by Amanda Lucidon

Speaking of first ladies, this photo book by former Official White House Photographer Amanda Lucidon captures Michelle Obama in the many roles that she played during Barack Obama’s presidency, from planting a kitchen garden at the White House to her “Let’s Move” fitness campaign to advocating for education for girls around the world. Like Pete Souza’s photo book of Barack Obama (mentioned in this Stack Overflow), this collection is adapted for kids from Lucidon’s larger photo book, Chasing Light. There are short passages of text explaining Michelle Obama’s role as first lady, along with occasional quotes.

That’s all I have time for today, but I probably have enough books left for another column next week, so stay tuned. In the meantime, if you want some more stories about amazing women, here are two more Stack Overflow columns on the subject!

Stack Overflow: 11 True Stories of Amazing Women

Stack Overflow: Women Who Changed the World

My Current Stack

I just finished reading an advance reading copy of Queen of the Sea by Dylan Meconis—it’s an upcoming graphic novel “loosely based on the youth of Queen Elizabeth I.” I hadn’t noticed the “loosely based on” when I started reading it, thinking it’d be a good fit for today’s column, but then I was just drawn into the story and went ahead and finished it anyway—even though the advance copy is in black and white (and half of it isn’t even shaded—it’s just outlines). You’ll definitely hear more about this one closer to its release date in June.

I also bought a really fun comic book called Invincible by Jousselin. The English translation is only available digitally for now, but it’s about a superhero who can interact with past and future frames of the comic strip, which effectively works a bit like a form of time travel. Along the way, there are some other characters who can manipulate perspective or cross through pages, and other really fascinating ways to use the comic strip medium. I really enjoyed it, and hope that the next volume gets translated soon as well.

Disclosure: Except where otherwise noted, I received review samples of the books covered in this column.

If Charles Darwin were alive today, he’d be celebrating his 210th birthday (and probably marveling at his own survival). So it seems fitting that Evolution: The Video Game officially launches today. What’s more, North Star Games is giving away 1,000 copies of the Evolution board game to celebrate!

I’ve written a lot about Evolution already, but in case you’re new to it, it’s a tabletop game that blends science and play—you’ll get to see evolutionary biology and survival of the fittest in action, and you’ll have fun doing it. The digital version of the game, which has been in development for about four years now, is gorgeous. (I’ve been able to play a few beta versions along the way.)

Here’s a trailer for the game:

I love that it’s not just a literal translation of board game to digital, but that it actually uses the digital medium to add visuals that enhance the game and aren’t just bells and whistles. For instance, while you still use “cards” to add traits to your species and food to the watering hole, the species boards do away with the wooden cubes and just show the numerical values. When a species becomes a carnivore, the paw print grows claws and the illustration changes to an aggressive version of the creature—it’s easy to look around and see which species you need to look out for. When various traits activate, the card illustration pops up and animates so you know which trait is linked to the effect.

The tutorial walks you through the game so that you learn all the basics by playing. If you’re playing alone, you can tackle the campaign, which pits you against various bosses in various environments. I like the way that the campaign introduces the trait cards, so that you start from a limited number of traits available and learn how they interact. For instance, the “Warning Call” trait protects adjacent species from attack, but “Ambush” overcomes it; these two traits are introduced together in one scenario.

The digital version will also allow you to play multiplayer with people all over the world: create an account to play games with your friends, or use the Quick Match feature to find other players! There’s a ranking system so that as you play, you’ll be paired up with people who match your skill level.

Earn “discoveries” to rank up by playing against specific types of players, winning, and maintaining a winning streak.

One of the nice things about digital tabletop games is that the game manages all the rules lawyering. You don’t have to worry about somebody forgetting to put in a food card for the watering hole, or incorrectly interpreting a trait card. The games also play a little more quickly than the tabletop game, because the app takes care of dealing out cards, moving cubes and boards around, and so on—you get to focus on the play.

I’ve been a fan of Evolution ever since I first played the prototype nearly five years ago, and I love the way that the game has continued to develop new traits, adapting to the marketplace. Only time will tell for sure, but I think this latest evolution into a digital form will have a pretty good chance of survival.

Evolution: The Video Game is available on Steam ($14.99), iOS ($9.99), and Android ($9.99), with a 20% discount until February 18. The iOS and Android versions are both free to try: you’ll get the tutorial, the first 9 levels of the campaign, easy AI opponents, and one free multiplayer game per day, with an in-app purchase to unlock the full game.

And now, about that giveaway: North Star Games will be giving away 10 copies of the Evolution board game per day for the next 100 days (winner pays shipping costs). You can enter by downloading the Free to Try version of Evolution: The Video Game and playing a multiplayer game.

Visit the website for download links, more about the game, and information about the giveaway!

Disclosure: I received a beta key to try out the digital version for review purposes.

I’ve had LEGO my whole life. My earliest memories of playing with toys include the free-form LEGO sets we had. Thanks to the below infographic, which shows the evolution of LEGO figures, including those that came before the modern day minifigure, I’ve been able to date my childhood collection to 1974 and 1975, since we had a ton of the early figures and a handful of the immobile ones.

The first LEGO building figure was launched in 1974. It was much larger than a modern minifigure, and you had to build the body yourself. It had a head and neck with well-articulated arms and hands, and you provided the rest. Build it standing straight up, have it sitting, build a dress on to it, or a pair of pants. Or make it 10 feet tall. There was also interchangeable hair and a variety of facial expressions, including a “granny” figure with grey hair and a bun, and she wore little glasses.

Just a year later in 1975, LEGO started making much smaller figures that had no faces but had solid bodies. Nothing was movable, though. But they did fit in smaller spaces! Such as inside vehicles you might build. So that was cool. I always liked the look of these figures, but they definitely didn’t have much personality.

Finally, in 1978, LEGO introduced the first modern style minifigure, and the LEGO-loving public never looked back. Now the faces had expressions, the limbs all moved, and you could put hats and other things on their heads. There were originally about 20 different minifigure characters, including a police officer, firefighter, astronaut, doctor, and knight, and it just expanded from there.

My first modern minifigure came a little later than 1978 later for me. I have (yes, I still have it!) a construction set similar to one of the pictures in the slideshow, below. The set has a crane, a forklift, a couple of minifigures, and more. I remember receiving it around age 10, so that would have been in the early ’80s.

To go along with this birthday (and yes, by all means, have cake), LEGO has shared some incredible imagery from the history of the minifigure. I couldn’t possible share all of the many gigs of files available, so I picked out some of the most interesting and representative imagery of the development of the minifigure over time. There are also some image that show the early evolution of the minifigure, from prototypes to the final result.

Also, here are some behind-the-scenes looks into a LEGO factory, along with the modern day molds used to make the minifigures.

Over the past 40 years, the minifigure collection has grown from the original ~20 figures to over 8,000 different figures sporting over 650 facial expressions. If you can dream it, chances are there is a minifigure that could personify it. Even if you’re thinking of a hot dog, banana, birthday cake, or chicken.

Here are a few facts:

• As long as they aren’t wearing hair or anything on their head, a LEGO minifigure measures four bricks tall.
• LEGO chose a neutral yellow color for the minifigures so that anyone who played with them could imagine themselves as part of the play. They can also re-imagine themselves, changing out hair, facial expressions, clothes, etc. Now you can put yourself in your LEGO playtime as male or female (or neither or both or gender queer), a ninja, an astronaut, Harry Potter, a singer, Batman, a droid, or anything else you can imagine.
• Eight different molds are used to produce each minifigure and they are almost identical to the molds that were originally used, though the speed of production has increased considerably. This means you can combine or mix and match minifigure parts from any of the figures from the past 40 years.

LEGO fun will, of course, continue in 2019. In addition to the likelihood of many new sets, we all anticipate with great excitement the release of LEGO Movie 2!

Happy Birthday, LEGO minifig!

• Harry Potter is SO OLD, his spectacles are bi-focals, now.
• Harry Potter is SO OLD, his patronus is a grey stag.
• Harry Potter is SO OLD, he sits in front of the TV and says “Accio remote!”
• Harry Potter is SO OLD, he says video tape instead of Blu-ray.
• Harry Potter is SO OLD, he needs the pill that shall remain nameless.
• Harry Potter is SO OLD, his kids have to remind him about how all his old Quidditch stories end.
• Harry Potter is SO OLD, when he looks at the Mirror of Erised, he sees his hair.
• Harry Potter is SO OLD, he gets a Probity Probe every other year.
• Harry Potter is SO OLD, he needs the pensive to find his car keys.
• Harry Potter is SO OLD, he had to see the doctor after mis-using the Petrificus Totalus spell.
• Harry Potter is SO OLD, his scar just points towards his bald spot.
• Harry Potter is SO OLD, he just sits on the porch yelling at the kids to “Locomotor of my lawn!”
• Harry Potter is SO OLD, his Firebolt is now classed as a ’classic.’
• Harry Potter is SO OLD, he keeps pointing his wand at his belly, and saying “Reducio!”
• Harry Potter is SO OLD, the Room of Requirement is always the bathroom.
• Harry Potter is SO OLD, he uses the Time Turner to watch Quidditch and take a nap at the same time.
• Harry Potter is SO OLD, he’s got bumper stickers on his car that says “My other car is a Firebolt” and “My son is an honor student at Hogwarts.”
• Harry Potter is SO OLD, he needs an Extendable Ear to listen to Potterwatch, which is all informercials these days, anyways.

And here are two limericks:

Harry Potter has now reached that age
That he thought would make him a sage
Once he was bold
but he’s now feeling so old
That in Warcraft he’s rolling a mage

In a place where the hippogriffs soar
Potter’s life has become such a bore,
Hermione’s time turner
and Ma Weasley’s sweater
Are now what he dreams when he snores

Live escape room adventures have become popular activities for friends, corporate outings, and families too.

An escape room is a game where a group of people are closed in a room and need to solve a series of puzzles and ciphers within a set time limit (typically 60 minutes) in order to get out. Each room has a theme and a story to go with it that is integral to the experience. Themes can range from historical adventure, to theatrical, to horror, to who knows what else.

World of Escapes, a website that maintains a directory of live escape rooms all over the world, lists over 4,500 in the United States alone, and their list is not complete as you will see. One of the escape rooms not listed (yet) is the Escape Room Center in Bridgewater, New Jersey. We just hosted my 11-year-old daughter’s birthday party there, and the young ladies had a blast.

My only prior experience with a live escape room was during a family visit in Maine, at The Escape Room in Portland. For that adventure, we had a mix of ages and backgrounds playing. We succeeded at solving the Western-themed puzzle with about 15 minutes to spare. My kids, ages 13 and 10 at the time, really enjoyed it. More to the point, they were active participants in solving the room, and every bit as effective as any of the adults.

This gave me some confidence to try a live escape room for my daughter’s birthday. I was a little worried that a group of 10 and 11-year-old girls might suffer from the lack of diversified experience on the team. This turned out to be a valid concern, but not one that deterred from their enjoyment of the adventure much.

The adventure was called The Lost Jewel of Zanzibar, and took place in Africa in 1930. Our team had to track down clues left by an explorer for the British Museum and find the missing jewel. Heading into the room, I planned not to help the girls unless they really needed it, and I told them so. I wanted this to be their adventure, and for them to lead and organize it. We had 60 minutes, and although our heroines were making progress, about 30 minutes in I decided I had better start pulling my weight.

Although the girls had done a good job uncovering many of the clues and unlocking some of the puzzles, they sometimes lacked critical focus. For example, one hint revealed that a locked cabinet could only be unlocked once a series of other puzzles were solved. The girls had to be reminded on a few occasions not to waste time trying to open that cabinet lock before solving the earlier challenges. This was not really surprising for kids their age.

In the end, we ran out of time, and a message appeared on the monitor explaining that the local warlord had arrived, which was bad news for our party. We probably needed another 15 minutes to get through that room.

The important thing is, the kids had fun. There was some angst towards the end that we didn’t win, but every single girl said afterward that they enjoyed the experience, and would try it again. So I’m calling it a big win.

I’d strongly recommend this activity for mixed groups of ages and experiences. Depending on the room, kids 10 or older should do fine with some support from older participants. As I learned, even a group of younger kids with good attitudes will enjoy the adventure. Check with your live escape room company before booking to be sure there are no age restrictions, and that the subject matter is suitable for your kids.

If you ask most Americans why we commemorate Veterans Day on November 11 each year, many probably won’t know. And in case you’re in that group: the armistice that ended the fighting in World War I was signed on November 11, 1918.

As my wife and I began planning our trip with the kids to France this past summer, I knew right away that if we were going to be driving through Northern France, as was the plan, I wanted to take them to some of the key sights related to the war that has already seemingly begun to be forgotten, at least here in the US. We ended up working out an itinerary that took us to the site of one of the bloodiest battles of the war, and the place where that armistice was signed.

The Somme

World War I was triggered by the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand and his wife in Sarajevo on June 18, 1914. A complex series of mutual defense treaties amongst the European powers meant that when Austria declared war on Serbia, a series of dominoes fell and by August 4, all of the major European powers had declared war on one another.

In early 1916, French and British leadership decided on a massive assault on the German lines across the Somme river in northern France. However, shortly after the plans were made, the Germans began their assault on Verdun, which forced the Allies to rethink their strategy, but the overall plan of forcing the Germans out of their trenches in France and pushing them out of Belgium remained.

On July 1, 1916, the allies attacked. The resulting battle, known alternately as the Battle of the Somme or the Somme Offensive, lasted for nearly 3 1/2 months. In the end, the allies managed to advance a mere 6 miles, and at a staggering cost: an estimated 420,000 British soldiers were killed, wounded, and went missing. There were another 204,000 French casualties and around 608,000 German. The British Army lost 57,000 soldiers on the first day of the battle–the single bloodiest day in the Army’s long history.

The Somme was the bloodiest battle of World War I, and the site army-technology.com lists it as the third bloodiest battle of the 20th Century, after the battles of Stalingrad and Moscow in World War II. It is, in fact, one of the bloodiest battles in all of human history.

I knew all of this history before our first stop on our day driving through the Somme. I had first encountered the battle as a kid reading John Macdonald’s book Great Battlefields of the World, a book I have now passed down to my son. Also, the Somme wasn’t the first battlefield I or my family had visited. The day before, we went to the Hundred Years War sites of Agincourt and Crécy. I’ve been to Culloden in Scotland, and Gettysburg and Little Bighorn in the US, among others. So as we parked at the first site, I really thought I was prepared for the experience, and yet somehow, standing there, looking out over a field of small crosses on this place where death and destruction on an almost unimaginable scale happened a mere century ago, I was still overwhelmed.

That first stop was at Australian Division Memorial near the village of Pozieres. There wasn’t a particular reason for stopping here, other than the fact that it was the first place we saw that looked like it was something other than a cemetery. It was here, on July 23, that newly arrived Australian forces launched an offensive against the  German front. Today, the Battle of Gallipoli in 1915 is more widely recognized in Australia and New Zealand, but the Australians lost more men in six weeks at Pozieres than they did in the entire Gallipoli campaign.

Today, Pozieres has a formal monument, with a walkway leading to the mound where an old windmill stood that was the focal point of the battle. The mound is flanked by a French and an Australian flag. But beyond that is the more poignant site: rows and rows of small wooden crosses, placed there by volunteers who felt that the Australian sacrifices deserved more.

Across the highway is another, more formal monument. It was at Pozieres that tanks were first used in combat, and this obelisk stands as a reminder to the brave men who fought in these new, mostly unproven weapons of war.

The image above is a 360-degree panorama I took of the Australian memorial, from the top of the mound where the windmill stood. The tank memorial is visible behind the cars.

Our next stop was the Lochnagar Crater. Part of the preparation by the Allies before the battle had been to dig under the German trenches and load these mines with explosives. Then, at the beginning of the battle, the mines would be detonated, hopefully decimating the German emplacements and resulting in an easy British win.

Half of that plan worked well. On the morning of July 1, 1916, Captain James Young of the 179th Tunnelling Company pressed a series of switches and detonated the mine at Lochnagar. It was the largest mine ever detonated at the time, and the loudest man-made noise ever created–there were reports of the explosion being heard in London. Between 300 and 400 feet of German trenches, reportedly full of German soldiers, were destroyed.

Unfortunately, it did little to impact the battle. British soldiers quickly took possession of the crater, but they ended up being shelled not only by the Germans but by their own artillery as well. At the end of the first day, the nearby village of La Boisselle was still in German hands, and more than 11,000 British soldiers lay dead on the field. Over 6000 of those were in and around the crater itself, making it the largest concentration of bodies anywhere in the Somme.

Today, the crater is owned by a private citizen, who has preserved it and opened it to the public. The crater is truly massive, and it has to be seen to be really appreciated. It’s 220 feet deep and 450 feet across. A wooden pathway allows visitors to walk the entire circumference of the crater, and memorials to some of the brave men who fought on July 1 have been erected around the edge.

Looking north from the crater, towards where the German lines were 101 years ago, we could see the red poppies that grow wild throughout the region and have since become a symbol of the sacrifices made during the war. It’s common today for the people in Commonwealth nations to wear a red poppy on Remembrance Day, their equivalent to Veterans Day in the US.

Also at the site was a small stand, where a very kind French gentleman was selling snacks and drinks and artifacts recovered in and around the crater. When he found out we were Americans, he showed my kids a knife recovered somewhere in France, clearly stamped “US 1917.” This artifact wasn’t from the Somme–the US didn’t enter the war until long after the battle was over–but it was an interesting reminder for the kids that we did fight in WWI.

Above is a 360-degree panorama of the crater. Behind me is the view towards the German lines; the gift stand/snack shape is just visible over my left shoulder.

After the crater, we headed to the town of Albert, the site of the largest museum dedicated to the battle. The museum, which is, like the crater, privately owned, was dug under the cathedral and is laid out so as to give visitors the feeling of what it might have been like to live and fight in the trenches. We actually wished that we had started out the day there, as it would have provided a better foundation for everyone in the family to understand the battle. We also discovered here that the only surviving actual trenches that are open to the public were way in the wrong direction, so, unfortunately, we had to skip them.

The town of Albert itself was beautiful. All over town are statues and monuments to the soldiers who fought in the battle.

Compiègne

Our other important World War I stop was the town of Compiègne. We had actually planned to visit the town for a very different reason–it was here, in 1430, that Joan of Arc was captured. My daughter had become interested in Joan during her 7th-grade history class, so we made a point of visiting a series of towns important to her life (but that’s a different post for a different day). But it was also in Compiègne that the fighting in World War I finally came to an end.

Technically, the armistice wasn’t signed in Compiègne itself, but rather in a clearing in the forest nearby. A very pretty drive out of town took us the Armistice Park. It was in a railcar in this clearing on at 5 AM on November 11, 1918 (the famed “11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month” refers to the time the cease fire took effect) that the German and Allied powers agreed to bring an end to the fighting that had caused an estimated 38,000,000 casualties over the prior four years. (The other Central powers had agreed to cease-fires over the preceding weeks.)

The site where the car sat on that day is today a large concrete circle dedicated to the event, watched over by a gigantic statue to French Marshall Foch, Supreme Allied Commander during the war on one of the signatories of the armistice. (The railcar was, in fact, his private car.)

This 360 panorama shows the site where the armistice was signed. If you pan to the right, you can just make out the Foch monument across the concrete circle. The small building in front of us houses the railcar and museum.

The car itself no longer exists. From 1921 to 1927, it was displayed in Paris, but Foch and other WWI heroes personally oversaw its return to Compiègne in 1927, where it was put in a specially-built building. However, on June 22, 1940, Adolf Hitler personally forced the French to sign their surrender in the same carriage. The Nazis destroyed the building and took the carriage back to Berlin, where it was displayed throughout the war. As Allied forces advanced on the city in 1945, it was moved to a nearby town, but as US forces advanced on that town as well, the SS soldiers guarding it set it on fire, resulting in its total destruction. In 1950, a car that had been built at exactly the same time was renumbered and restored as an exact duplicate of the original, and that today is on display inside a small museum about the armistice. The museum also houses a few small fragments of the original car, recovered from Germany after the war.

Seeing where the war ended only days after having stood on its bloodiest battlefield served as a poignant reminder to all those who fought and died from 1914-1918.

First up: Costumes!

Halloween is nothing without costumes, as far as I’m concerned. This year, I’m headed out as Grumpy Bear. The costume from Fun.com comes with mittens and shoe covers, so I’m a pile of blue fuzz from top to bottom. Speaking of bottoms, these costumes come equipped with fuzzy tails, which I find funnier than perhaps I should. The only downside with these costumes is that they zip up in back, so you may need a bit of help getting in and out. The mittens can be slipped off, and dangle from the sleeves when not in use. Useful for when you need to eat or drink at your party.

Kids’ and ladies’ costumes are available, of course. I particularly love the Share Bear costume pictured above. With so many options available, the whole family could use Fun.com to set up a whole family of Care Bears!

Other options for costumes are less traditional and/or faithful, including pajamas, which can be worn more comfortably, but have a cutie mark which is split by the zipper, and lack mittens, shoe covers, and tails. The flip side, of course, is that one gets much more use out of pajamas than costumes.

Next up: Food!

There are many great ways to make your party food more magical. Here are some ideas and recipes for the perfect Care Bear party:

• Cotton Candy
• Rice Crispy Treats with food coloring in various colors
• Sherbet punch
  ~One container of sherbet + One 2-liter bottle of Sprite. Drop ice cream in punch bowl and pour soda over the top for a fluffy and fun punch.
• Cake, cupcakes, or angel food cakes decorated in magical ways.
• Rainbow jello molds
• You can also color white chocolate and dip snacks in the colorful chocolate for deliciously bright food. This is a great way to serve fruit, too. Melon, strawberries, bananas, and grapes are all great options for sneaking a (slightly more) healthy choice onto the table.

Some magical ways of decorating food easily include:

• Food coloring in endless varieties of food.
  ~Try mixing cream cheese with small amounts of food coloring, adding color until you’ve got the right color, then mixing in sugar to make colorful cream cheese icing. For your regular cream cheese icing recipe, try using a little less sugar for a more flavorful icing, or try adding peppermint flavor for a real surprise.
• Rainbow sprinkles

  

• Cupcake toppers, can be made with any kind of figurine, like those seen above, just remember to clean them first!
  ~The best part about these, is that they can be party favors without you having to go through the trouble of putting together a dozen tiny bags of things the kids will probably throw away after the party.
• Rainbow-colored or glittery candles
  ~Remember, when you buy glitter accessories to get edible glitter.

Now for some unique party fun: Decorations

One great thing about Halloween is the ease of purchasing decorations that are easily altered for party decorations. Here are fun and easy decorations, including ones which are easier during the holidays.

• Artificial spider web = clouds
  ~Try adding temporary color hair sprays (outdoors) to color the web to add fun color and sparkle.
• LED string lights hanging these cool-running lights behind colorful “clouds” is another way to brighten up the party room, especially if you’re using a naturally dark room for the party. These allow you to change the colors in a huge array.
• Colorful streamers, banners, and tablecloths are staples, but there are sometimes good sales on such things during the holidays.

Remember, when you’re decorating, to be creative. Picking out Care Bear specific decorations combined with more generic ones will keep the theme focused, without staring at 900 pictures of Funshine Bear.

Celebrate as much as you like.

With 35 years of Care Bears to celebrate, you can bring our magical friends into any celebration, whether it’s Halloween parties or Christmas ornaments. Make your own, or buy officially licensed* merchandise to make each celebration exactly how you like it.

How do you celebrate? Let us (and Care Bears) know:
@CareBears
#35YearsofCaring
@TerminallyRory

*Officially licensing merchandise is important, because we always want to support the creators of the things we love, and buying unofficial merch takes money from the folks who bring us joy, and puts it in the pockets of folks preying on our passion. 

Fun.com provided a Grumpy Bear costume for the purposes of this post.

Sometime in October, 1987, I was a high school sophomore, and I took my new girlfriend to see The Princess Bride. I assume I was thinking that it sounded like a nice, romantic movie, and thus a good choice for not only our first movie together, but honestly, the first movie I was ever taking a girl to at all. But to be honest, I don’t recall what I was thinking, because I don’t actually remember the date.

Many, many years later, that girlfriend, who was now my wife, and I were watching the movie again at home, and at one point I casually said, “I wonder what year this came out?” Needless to say, she still hasn’t let me live that down.

I may not remember the date very well (or at all), but I do remember not being terribly impressed by the movie. I liked all of the medieval-era fantasy bits, but I found the constant interruptions by Fred Savage and his grandfather (played by Peter Falk) to be annoying. But on rewatching it years later, I came away with an entirely different viewpoint. I’m going to chalk up those initial impressions to me being young, and also to the fact that I was probably more focused on being nervous on the date and so not really able to relax and lose myself in the movie.

Today, I will readily rate the film as one of my all-time favorites. It’s one of those movies that I’ve now seen so many times that whenever I get the chance to see it, it feels more like a visit from an old friend. And like many, many others, lots and lots of lines from the movie have made it in to my lexicon.

This year, TCM is celebrating the 30th anniversary of the movie with a limited re-release in theaters in conjunction with theater special events company Fathom Events, and on Sunday night, I went to see it with my family. My kids have seen it before, but never in the theater, and of course my wife and I haven’t seen it in the theater since that night 30 years ago, so there was something special about seeing it this time around.

It’s definitely worth seeing on the big screen. While it’s fun to see some reminders to the ’80s in Savage’s bedroom–the poster on the wall of the Chicago Bears player known as “The Fridge,” the He-Man toy on his headboard, the Burger King promotional glass from The Empire Strikes Back–it’s one of those movies that just doesn’t seem to age. Yes, we frequently see much older versions of Mandy Patinkin in Homeland and Robin Wright in House of Cards, but even that isn’t enough to take us out of this wonderful vision Rob Reiner created from William Goldman’s book. (Goldman also wrote the screenplay.)

This also isn’t some kind of special director’s cut or anything like that. There is an introduction and a post-credits interview with Reiner that’s worth seeing, but otherwise, it’s just the movie you know and love.

And there’s a bit of good news here, too: you still have a chance to see the movie again, as this special re-release will be playing again in theaters this Wednesday. So do yourself a favor. Even if your kids have already seen the greatest sword fight ever filmed. Even if they get it when you send them off to school with “have fun storming the castle!,” and already know what you mean when you say, “as you wish,” clear your schedule, clear your kids’ schedule, and go see it on the big screen. It’d simply be inconceivable to miss it.

As part of our celebration of the 40th anniversary of Star Wars, the GeekMoms and GeekDads came together to share some of their feelings about the franchise.

S.W. Sondheimer: Rebel. Girls.

Leia was the first woman I saw save the universe.

There were other female heroes before her but she is the first one I encountered (I met Wonder Woman and others later). One of my earliest recollections is watching wide-eyed as the tiny princess insulted an admiral as though he didn’t have her life in his hands and then moved on to her next foe, standing literally toe to toe with the most feared man in the galaxy without a shred of hesitation. When they took her home, she mourned, but instead of allowing grief to swallow her, she dove right back into the fray. She wielded her wit and her intelligence and a blaster with equal ease and when a giant slug made her wear a metal bikini, she killed him with a chain and her bare hands.

I haven’t ever strangled a giant slug, but when I’ve needed strength or guts or persistence in my life, when people have made me feel small for being smart or geeky, I’ve thought of Leia and I’ve chosen to be proud instead. When shadows loom over me the way Vader did over Leia, I remember her defiance and I borrow some of it.

Her rebel heirs are no less remarkable: Ahsoka Tano, Hera Syndulla, Rey, Jyn Erso, Shara Bey, Jessica Pava, Nora Wesley, and others we have yet to meet. But Leia was the first, the original, Rebel Girl. Long Live the Princess and forever may she reign.

And that’s what Star Wars means to me.

Mariana Ruiz: I love the fact that I am sharing the old movies with my kids, they are toddlers but they grasp the essentials firmly enough: my 2-year-old knows and loves the Imperial March, he can hum it by heart! My 5-year-old knows which song is known as “Duel of the Fates” and understands that Vader is Luke’s father. I saw it growing up in Bolivia on a VCR (probably a Betamax as well) with my siblings, in the 1990’s, and our thrill was the same that my own kids experience today. A film that can bestow the same excitement for 40 years straight is something wonderful indeed.

Amy Weir: My happiest Star-Wars-related feelings are all about geeking out with other people.

• The Special Editions came out in the theaters during my freshman year of college. I lived in an Honors dorm, so we all had classes together and vaguely knew each other, but somebody had the idea to invite everyone in the dorm to go together opening night. My roommate had either not seen it or seen it too long ago to remember much, so I remember having to insist that she come along. So there were something like 30 of us piling into the theater together, calling out jokes to each other, realizing one of our professors was probably actually Obi-Wan Kenobi in hiding, dropping obnoxious fake “spoilers” in front of the people coming in for the next show. Somebody got me a Star Wars quote poster for my birthday that year, and the whole room (again, for some reason the entire dorm was invited) burst out cheering.
• Then there was the New Years Eve my little brother and I were the only people in the household not going out to a party, so we had a Star Wars (at that point just three movies) marathon instead. We were at the party barge scene in Return of the Jedi at about a minute to midnight, and I stopped the VCR so we could watch the countdown. We silently watched the noisy crowd at Times Square for about 30 seconds until my brother asked if we could put the movie back on, which I quickly agreed to.
• Twice in adulthood I witnessed another adult experiencing the movies for the first time. One of them liked the prequels better than the original. The other one gushed about how cool it was that they’d found actors to play Luke and Leia who actually did look like the offspring of Natalie Portman and Hayden Christensen—don’t worry, she caught the error right away and found it terribly funny herself.
• Then, of course, there’s sharing it with my own kids… if only they were as interested as their dad and me! “

Anika Dane: Last December, I saw Rogue On opening weekend with my daughters, our friends, and a full theater of Star Wars fans. It was a matinee so there were lots of families and younger kids, including one little girl, maybe six, who was so excited she shouted out at the screen a few times. Everything she said matched up with everything I, and presumably everyone else, was thinking so, no one minded. To the contrary, her enthusiasm was contagious and audience engagement gained momentum just as the film did until we were all barreling toward its final act. Then, in the very final moments, when everyone in the theater was emotionally exhausted from the death and the Darth, the plans to the Death Star are handed to their courier and the little girl shouted “Princess Leia!!” into the silence.

The entire theater erupted. Some people shouted. Some people sobbed. Some people laughed. Some people applauded. No one was silent, no one was still. It was a cacophony of pure reaction. We were all united because one little girl loved Leia, a character that had been introduced thirtysomething years before she was born, and every single person there knew exactly what she was feeling.

That’s what Star Wars means to me.

Rob Huddleston: I can’t say exactly how or why I first fell in love with Star Wars. I was five when it came out, and apparently, that wasn’t an entirely pleasant experience for me or my parents. (See our “My First Star Wars” post for more on that story.) All I do know is that literally for as long as I can remember, Star Wars has been part of my life.

I do remember the day The Empire Strikes Back came out. My dad took the day off and went downtown to the big theater, with my mom picking us kids up from school and going down to join him in the afternoon. We did the same thing for The Return of the Jedi, although thanks to a thoughtless jerk in my class, I learned that Leia was Luke’s sister earlier in the day.

Growing up in the 70s, we had to see movies in theaters. I know. It was like the Dark Ages or something. So I also don’t know how many times I saw that original theatrical release. Probably not too many. What I do know is that in 1979, Random House published The Art of Star Wars, a beautiful hardback book full of Ralph McQuarrie’s art and, more importantly, the complete script to the movie. As soon as I had it–I don’t know if it was a birthday or Christmas gift or something I talked my parents into getting just because–it became my primary reading material. One of my earliest Star Wars memories is my mom reading me that script at bedtime. Over and over and over. I didn’t memorize the movie from repeat watchings, but rather, repeat readings.

I know that ever since 1978, I have been the easiest person in the world to shop for. In fact, for each and every birthday and Christmas since I was 7, I have gotten at least one thing Star Wars-related. A trend that continues to this day.

But the real impact Star Wars had on my life was that I came away thinking that space was cool. From the time I was six or seven–the time of that mysterious repeat viewing of the movie–,it became my life’s goal to go into space. From that point forward, I had one clear ambition in life. I studied everything I could about the space program. In fourth grade, I entered a 1:1 scale model of Sputnik in my school’s science fair. In fifth grade, a different project at the district science fair won me a special prize from NASA: my dad and I went down to Houston for a special guided tour of the Johnson Space Center. I went to Space Camp–twice. I spent most of my time during the summer building and launching model rockets. I maintained that laser-like focus until eleventh grade physics, where I finally realized that having a career as a scientist maybe didn’t interest me so much after all. But even though I ended up on a different career path, I can absolutely trace my love of science and technology–and particularly all things related to space and the space program–to that galaxy far, far away.

Will James: I’m not even sure where to start or what to cover, but I think I’ll boil it down to two quintessential things for now. First off, the shared experience with my son is absolutely the best thing about Star Wars. I remember playing with Star Wars toys, listening to the audiobooks on my little record player, watching the movies (even, and especially, the Ewoks ones) on VHS over and over again, and building model kits. Now, my son who is four-years-old, not only enjoys all of those same things–he has more Star Wars toys than I ever did, has listened to a ton of audiobooks on CD,  seen The Force Awakens and Rogue One in the theater (and what an experience those were with him) and animated versions of all the rest of the movies, and has built a couple of the new (and much better) model kits with me–but he enjoys and knows more about Star Wars than I ever could have. He has made me more of a fan and it’s something we enjoy together on a daily basis so much so that we joked about changing our podcast to only be about Star Wars because if it’s not the main focus of an episode, it comes up at least once.

The second thing goes back to the model making. Along with Star Wars, I built a ton of models as a kid, teenager, and in my early twenties. Every time I painted and completed a kit, I dreamed of someday being one of the guys who make the models and scenes used in movies like Star Wars. But instead I went into IT and made a pretty decent almost 20 year career out of it. So it’s pretty ironic that as we celebrate the 40th anniversary of Star Wars, and I am about to celebrate my 40th birthday (yep, we were born the same year), I recently lost my job of 13 years and decided to take a shot at costume and prop making and now, here I am, working on a local independent film as a prop maker.

I am doing my dream job that I wouldn’t ever have imagined if not for Star Wars.

After the success of our “Tinker Birthday Party” for child one, child two also wanted to tinker together with his friends for his birthday. So we decided to have a “robot tinker party” and build bristlebots. For a bristlebot, in case you haven’t seen one yet, a vibration motor is placed on one or more brushes, usually toothbrush heads. Because of the vibration, the resulting “robot” starts to move around and often displays an uncanny ability to work its way along and around obstacles – check out the little video of our “Bristlebot Arena” at the end of this post to see the finished bristlebots in action.

The challenge of building eight bristlebots with eight kids aged between seven and nine is to keep the construction simple enough (no soldering!) and cost manageable (you can build bristlebots of all sizes, but with several toothbrush heads and a larger vibration motor, things start to get costly.) So we went for a minimal bristlebot that is moving around on a single toothbrush head and we used adhesive tape to avoid soldering.

The image below shows what we used to build a bristlebot. The bot itself is assembled from a battery, a toothbrush head, a vibration motor, a Cent, a bit of aluminum foil and cardboard paper. To put everything together, foam tape (which is sticky on both sides) and insulating tape were used.

The first step was the most tricky one. We use the insulating tape both to (1) create a little “conducting pocket” formed by the aluminum foil and one side of the battery and (2) glue one of the contacts of the vibrational motor to the other side of the battery. The “conducting pocket” serves as switch: by pushing the other contact of the vibration motor into the pocket, the motor is “switched” on. The image below shows the necessary steps.

This step turned out to be more challenging than I had thought. Firstly, you must make sure that the kids glue the right contact to the battery. Secondly, you must take care that the kids do not short circuit the battery with the piece of aluminum foil. Thirdly, it turned out that the contacts of the vibrational motor are rather brittle and may break – I did have to do some soldering during the party, after all.

For the final assembly, we placed a piece of foam tape on the toothbrush head and stuck the vibration motor and a Cent on top. The Cent serves several purposes. Firstly, it levels out the surface for the battery, which in the next step is stuck on top of the motor and  half the Cent – on the remaining  part of the Cent, a face for the robot can be placed. The Cent further provides a bit of additional weight, which helps to transfer the motor’s motion to the surface. Finally, later when the robot is moving around and hits an obstacle, the metal cent will make a satisfying clicking noise upon impact. The figure below shows the assembly of the bristlebot.

The kids were free to create their own bristle bot designs – we had several colors of insulating tape and cardboard paper available, and thus a colorful and varied family of bristlebots emerged.

Using blocks from a wooden construction set, the kids built the “Bristle Bot Arena ™” and let the bristle bots loose. Below, you find a photo of the arena and a short video of the bristle bots in action.

We all had fun with building the bristlebots and experimenting with them, but I must admit that the design of the bristlebots was not ideal. I got around soldering during preparation, but when the flimsy contacts started breaking, I had to solder anyways, and in a hurry at that. Therefore, a design using a motor to which robust contacts can be soldered (as suggested, e.g. by the Evil Mad Scientist blog) probably is preferable. But whichever design you use: Have a go at building some bristlebots with your kids!

For a lot of us, this may come as a bit of a shock: twenty years ago today, on March 10, 1997, Joss Whedon’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer first premiered on TV. I know, I can’t believe it’s been 20 years, either.

Buffy was the first TV show I watched with any sort of devotion. Each Tuesday morning, I would check and recheck to make sure that the VCR timer was set, and that the tape was in there, queued to just the right spot. (It all seems so primitive now…) It was the first show that I can remember going out of my way to watch each week, and certainly the first show I ever watched where I saw every episode in order as they aired.

Buffy is also a show that will be with me forever in a very literal sense, because even though he was born years after the show went off the year, my wife and I named our son Xander after the character from the show.

It shouldn’t come as a surprise that many of us GeekDad writers are big fans of the show. Keep an eye out over the next week, as we have several more posts planned to commemorate the anniversary of the show, including the obligatory “favorite episodes” post.

Fifty years ago, on the afternoon of January 27, 1967, three astronauts climbed into an Apollo capsule on launch pad 34 at Cape Kennedy. Astronauts Edward White, Virgil “Gus” Grissom, and Roger Chaffee weren’t on their way to space that day. It was just a test–a launch rehearsal. But five and a half hours into the test, one of the astronauts, most likely Chaffee, reported a fire in the cabin. Because it was only a test, the explosive bolts on the capsule door weren’t armed, and it took ground crews almost five minutes to open the hatch, by which time all three men were dead. It was the first time America had lost astronauts.

Command Pilot Virgil “Gus” Grissom grew up in Indiana. Immediately after graduating from high school in 1944, he enlisted in the Army Air Forces, but the war would end before he saw any action and he was discharged late in 1945. After graduating from Purdue University, he re-enlisted in the newly formed United States Air Force, earning his pilot’s wings in 1951. During the Korean War, he flew 100 combat missions in an F-86 Sabre.

On April 13, 1959, Grissom received notification that he had been selected as one of the first seven Mercury astronauts. Just over two years later, on July 21, 1969, he became the second American to fly in space. After his suborbital flight, the hatch on his capsule unexpectedly blew. While Grissom was rescued, his Mercury capsule was lost. (It was later recovered in 1999, and is currently on display at the Children’s Museum in Indianapolis.)

On March 23, 19654, Grissom commanded Gemini 3, making him the first American to fly in space twice. As a humorous reference to the fate of his Mercury capsule, he named the Gemini 3 Molly Brown. His co-pilot for the mission was John Young, who would go on to walk on the Moon and command the first-ever Space Shuttle mission.

At the time of his death, Grissom was a Lieutenant Colonel. He left behind his wife, Betty, and two sons. He is buried in Arlington National Cemetery.

Senior Pilot Edward White II was born in Texas, the son of a man who would become a Major General in the Air Force. As a youth, he was a Boy Scout, and he graduated from West Point Military Academy in 1952. We tried out for the Olympics in swimming and just barely missed making the team.

In 1962, White was named as one of the nine men selected as the second group of astronauts. On June 3, 1965, as the pilot of Gemini 4, White became the first American to walk in space. At the end of the EVA, he said, “I’m coming back in… and it’s the saddest moment of my life.”

Like Grissom, he was a Lieutenant Colonel at the time of his death. He was buried at West Point, and left behind his wife Patricia, a son and a daughter.

Pilot Roger Chaffee was the only member of the Apollo 1 crew never to make it to space. Chaffee grew up in Michigan, where he became an Eagle Scout. He turned down an offer to attend the Naval Academy at Annapolis, and instead attended the Illinois Institute of Technology on a NROTC scholarship. Chaffee transferred to and graduated from Purdue, and after graduation joined the Navy as a pilot. During the Cuban Missile Crisis, he flew 82 missions over the island.

On October 18, 1963, Chaffee was selected as one of the 18 men picked in the third group of astronauts. He was the capsule communicator, or CAPCOM, for both Grissom’s Gemini 3 flight and White’s Gemini 4.

He is buried next to Grissom at Arlington National Cemetery. Like the others, he left behind a wife and two children. The Chaffee Crater on the Moon is named for him. All three Apollo 1 astronauts have hills on Mars named for them.

Following the accident, NASA changed many of its procedures, including discontinuing the policy of filling capsules with pure oxygen and ensuring that explosive bolts are always engaged on hatches when astronauts are inside. They also removed many of the flammable materials inside the craft.

At the request of the astronauts’ wives, NASA agreed to officially designate the test as Apollo 1. The next manned flight, Apollo 7, wouldn’t launch until October, 1968, in a fully redesigned capsule. Of course, 9 months after that, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin would complete what White, Grissom, and Chaffee had begun and become the first men on the Moon.

It would be almost twenty years before NASA lost any more astronauts. Coincidentally, the next disaster would take place nineteen years and one day after Apollo 1 when Space Shuttle Challenger exploded on January 28, 1986.

My son likes making and tinkering, and so do several of his friends. So we decided to have a “Tinker Birthday Party.” Searching for inspiration of what to make together with a dozen children, I found the “Talking Booby Trap” in Bob Knetzger’s  Make: Fun, in which he uses a clothes pin as switch for activating a sound playback. Replacing the sound playback unit with a simple buzzer gave me something that was simple enough and cheap enough to use as project for the birthday party: a small alarm system.

For each child, I prepared a bag with the parts required for the alarm system – though I decided to hand out the battery after each child had completed the circuit so as to prevent the children from accidentally shorting the battery.

I started out the project by demonstrating the alarm system to the children. I had built two examples and used them to secure a book on a shelf and a door, then asked two children to “steal” the book and open the door, respectively … buzzzzzz!

Then I cut the cable binder, took apart the clothes pin and demonstrated the circuit to the children as follows:

The tricky part of making the alarm system is building the two contact areas at the tips of the clothes pin: The cables have to be wrapped tightly into aluminum foil and then secured with adhesive tape. By providing the children with several choices of adhesive tape, they were able to decorate their alarm systems in different colors (though, this being an alarm system, red was the color of choice for many).

Once each circuit was ready, we put in the battery, reassembled the clothes pin, and tied everything together with the cable binder.

Things went well, though I wish my the battery in my voltmeter had not died just then and there. Not all circuits worked right away and troubleshooting without the voltmeter was cumbersome. But finally, all alarm systems worked and we used them to build a small obstacle course, which the children had to traverse as fast as possible without triggering an alarm. After all that tinkering, some running about was a welcome change! Looking at how much fun we had, I have the feeling that this was not our last “Tinker Birthday Party.”

In 1996, my eldest daughter was almost 10 years old. She’d gotten into comics a couple of years earlier through DC Comics’ Batman Adventures series, based on the iconic animated TV series. Issue number 8 had featured Batgirl, and the revelation that girls could be heroes sparked more interest. She soon discovered, to her quite vocal disgust, that most ’90s superheroines were, in her words, stupid. They ran around trying to fight in strapless tops, butt-floss thongs and insane high heel shoes that nobody could run or fight in. The pickings were slim. Apart from the then-recent reboot of the Legion of Superheroes, there were very few women in the comics pages that Ashley admired and wanted to read about. And then came Leave it to Chance.

James Robinson, then at the top of his popularity due to his writing of the acclaimed Starman series, teamed up with X-Men fan-favorite artist Paul Smith to create a new world where magic is not only real, it’s commonplace; in this world, the evening news regularly includes accounts of mystical events the way our news reports the weather and traffic. In the quietly spooky town of Devil’s Echo, the people depend on acclaimed sorcerer Lucas Falconer to protect them from malignant forces. Since time immemorial, a Falconer has protected Devil’s Echo, but now (at least in Lucas’ mind) there’s a problem: Lucas’ wife was murdered by the evil wizard Belloc in an attack that left Lucas disfigured, and his only child is a girl.

Naturally, since Chance has reached her 14th birthday, the age at which Falconers traditionally begin their training, she is excited to prepare for her future role, but Lucas has other ideas; he wants her to grow up, get married, have a son, and let him be the next protector. Chance, being a true Falconer, decides to take matters into her own hands and jumps into one supernatural crisis after another, substituting courage and intelligence for the training she lacks.

In the first story arc, Chance rescues an extra-dimensional baby dragon, a Native American shaman and his daughter, and the entire city, when the Horned Toad God arises to destroy it. In the second, she prevents a boy’s pet monkey from being sacrificed in an arcane ritual, an adventure that results in her being packed off to boarding school “for her own protection.” There, she gathers her own “Scooby Gang” of fellow students and, in true Scooby-Doo fashion, faces down a pirate’s ghost searching for his lost treasure on the school grounds; but since this is Devil’s Echo, the ghost might be real. Further adventures include a quartet of movie monsters stepping off the screen to wreak havoc, a zombie hockey player, and a young thief with romantic notions about our heroine.

After 11 issues under the Homage Comics imprint at Image, issue #12 was published by DC comics in 1999, wherein Chance uses a potion given to her father by Lewis Carroll to shrink to fairy size and assist in a war in her garden. Two years later, Chance returned to Image for issue #13, a double-size issue intended to restart the series, ending on a cliffhanger. The story has never been completed.

My children enjoyed Chance, and recently my son, now age 26, shared it with his girlfriend. She told me “I loved it and am heartbroken that it ends the way it does.”

This book actually altered my parenting. I had always leaned a bit toward the “free-range” side and looked askance at helicopter parents, but Chance took it a step further, with one panel in particular catching my attention. In the scene, a magically produced storm is creating massive flooding, and Chance learns that a colony of sewer goblins are going to drown. (Devil’s Echo has a thriving sewer goblin population, because of course it does.) Chance knows she’s the only one who can help, but as she heads for the door, she is stopped by Quince, the housemaid, who tells her to go to her room and “be good.” Here’s Chance’s reply.

In case the image doesn’t load, or it’s too tiny to read on your device, she says “Everyone tells me to be good. Be sweet. Be nice. No one tells me to be right. To do the right thing. That’s what Daddy would do. The right thing. I’m going out, Quince.”

From that day to this, I have never told my kids to be good, sweet, or nice. I have often told them to be right. This page, along with Spider-Man’s “with great power…” and Green Lantern’s Oath, is baked into my parenting philosophy. Be right. Do right. Thanks for the tip, Chance. I’m sure my kids appreciate the trust you encouraged me to have in them.

Some years ago, I asked Paul Smith about the possibility of reviving the multiple-Eisner-winning series. His response was essentially “I’m skinny, but I do need to eat sometimes.” He was talking about the simple fact that the reason the book ended was that it didn’t sell.

As Ridley Scott once said, “Being ahead of your time is just as bad if not worse as being behind the times.” When Chance made her debut, Harry Potter was still several months in the future and wouldn’t become a global sensation for at least a year. There was no popular thirst for plucky tweens having mystical adventures, and outside of manga there were no really prominent female characters carrying their own title except Wonder Woman, and she had seen better days at that point. There was virtually no market for “girl comics,” other than the ubiquitous Betty & Veronica; Lumberjanes, Gotham Academy, and Squirrel Girl were far in the future, and about the only people who ever set foot in a comic shop in those days were guys who had been buying comics for years, and the only ones who bought Chance were the ones with daughters. Because the comic was principally sold in places where girls seldom went, there was little opportunity to get it into the hands of its target audience. Leave it to Chance became, in the words of fellow GeekDad Mordechai Luchins, “a really cool idea that ended up not going anywhere and was allowed to die.” Despite critical acclaim, Leave it to Chance sat on the shelves, while the kids who would have loved it remained oblivious to its existence.

The bright side is that all those unsold copies are now up on Amazon for the plucking, both the original comics and as collected books in both paperback and hardback formats. The hardback editions are oversized and beautiful, reprinting issues 1-11 in three volumes. For issues 12 and 13, you’ll need to buy the original issues, since they’ve never been reprinted.

When I realized that the 20th anniversary was approaching (the first issue is cover-dated September, the copyright notice says October, so we’ll split the difference), I emailed Smith and asked for an interview. He replied, “Thanks for the opportunity but I’m with Ditko and Harper Lee. I have no interest in interviews.”

I then reached out to Robinson at the only point of contact I knew of, Twitter. His response was “Err, I wish I could have done more. Unfortunately @paulsmithdraws doesn’t return calls. Oh well, Happy 20th, Chance. You were fun.”

I asked Image founder Erik Larsen (via Facebook) if the company was planning to do anything to acknowledge the anniversary. He said that in order to do that, the comic’s creator-owners would have to want to do something, and stated that Image would be happy to publish it if they did.

So, James and Paul, if you see this, I hope you decide to revisit the most underappreciated and unjustly neglected comic of the ’90s. (We have Kickstarter and GoFundMe now!) I hope Scholastic figures out it would fit very nicely on the shelf between Harry Potter and Bone, or that Harper-Collins or another major publisher recognizes the value of the series, and I hope Netflix realizes that it would make a fabulous companion to Stranger Things, perhaps as an animated feature aimed at the girls (and boys) aged 9–12 for whom it was created. Chance Falconer and her world are just too good and fun to be discarded and forgotten. Maybe if Hollywood waved some money at it we could get a second run, and maybe even a conclusion to that cliffhanger.

Fifty years ago today–September 8, 1966–the starship Enterprise began its five year mission with the premiere of “The Man Trap” on NBC. Few science fiction franchises have had as profound an impact as Star Trek, and certainly fewer still can be said to be alive and well a half century after they began.

To celebrate today, several GeekDads and GeekMoms have shared their feelings about Star Trek and what the franchise has meant to them and their lives, including that Trek is indirectly responsible for GeekDad’s existence, taught GeekDad Matt Blum about expanding his worldview, connected several GeekDads with the generations past and future, and provided GeekDad Jules with his faith in humanity.

Ken Denmead, Owner/Publisher: Star Trek is, in a way, responsible for GeekDad and GeekMom existing today as they are. Back in 2007, when I joined the new GeekDad blog, I had spent the previous couple of years as a member of, and ultimately running, a Play-by-e-Mail (PbeM) Star Trek Role-Playing Game called Starbase Phoenix. Not only was it amazing fun, and a great fan-fic experience, it also taught me a huge amount about managing a disparate group of writers and putting out consistent, regular content. I had even taught myself how to podcast, and so already had many of the necessary skills developed when GeekDad came my way to run. It was an easy transition from being the Captain of an imaginary starbase to being the Grand Nagus of a real blogging community filled with just as many amazing, surprising characters, each with their own stories to tell.

Matt Blum,Editor-in-Chief: 

The Top 8 Things I learned from Star Trek:

1. Logic is awesome. Spock was my favorite TOS character, and my desire to emulate him no doubt was a key part of my love of computers as a kid. TNG started a few weeks after I started high school, and if I had needed any more convincing that I wanted to be a programmer, that would have been the final push.

2. Knowledge is important for its own sake. Both TOS and TNG taught me that to enjoy life you need to learn new things all the time, even if there’s no specific reason why you need that knowledge.

3. All sentient beings deserve the same rights. I grew up in the ’80s and I’ll admit that I was among those who didn’t quite know how to think about homosexuality or transgender (a word I’m not certain I heard before college) issues. The Star Trek philosophy of IDIC (Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations) and the way android-related issues were handled on TNG helped me recognize that people deserve to be whoever they are, and that every person deserves to be judged by how they act regarding things they can control, and not by the the things they can’t.

4. Questioning authority is probably the most important part of freedom. Leaders who don’t know that they’re fallible are dangerous, and citizens who don’t keep their leaders in check are even more so.

5. Brains are more important than brawn. There are times when it’s necessary to use physical means to solve a problem, but most of the time those physical means would be wasted without a sound plan to back them up.

6. Hunting humpback whales is awful. And, wonderfully, they were just taken off the endangered species list, so it looks like most of Star Trek IV won’t be necessary after all.

7. Patrick Stewart is a good enough actor to be believable playing a French character even with his obviously-British accent.

8. Counselor Troi should have been removed from the show at the same time Tasha Yar was, since the number of times Marina Sirtis made me forget that she was acting in the entire series could be counted on one hand.

Anika Dane: My mother died, suddenly, during the second season of Star Trek: The Next Generation. I was thirteen. A few weeks later the episode “Pen Pals” aired. It starts with a young girl sending a message into space, just four words: “Is anybody out there?” Data, the Enterprise’s android officer, answers “Yes.” Star Trek has always been there for me when I needed to know someone was out there. The many series have provided entertainment, education, and encouragement and the many fans have given me somewhere to belong. Star Trek is my pen pal.

Will James: Star Trek means several specific things to me. My dad was a big Star Trek fan, but he could never convince me to watch with him. Then, when I was thirteen-years-old, he died and, among many other things, left me VHS recordings of the first two seasons of The Next Generation (season three was airing). I watched those tapes and fell in love with Trek. Star Trek, and specifically Wil Wheaton and Wesley Crusher helped me get through a really hard time in my life and also instilled a love of sci-fi and computers that is a huge part of my life every day.

Star Trek was also responsible for one of my current passions–cosplay and prop making. A Star Trek convention was my first con. My first cosplay (before it was called that) was a TNG jumpsuit my mom had made for me. I completed it with my first cosplay prop–a phaser made out of cardboard and painted with my Testors model paints. And although I never got to go to a convention with my dad, I know he would’ve gone with me and dressed up too. And I love carrying on that imagined tradition with my own kids.

Whenever I watch TNG, or anything Star Trek related, even if it’s just another Picard facepalm meme, I always think of my dad.

Samantha Fisher: My dad and I spent a lot of time together. He’d joke I was the son he never had since I was the youngest of five daughters and my parents had managed to convince themselves I was a boy when they found they were pregnant again. Most of the time we spent together was working in one form or another. Working on the house, the cars, or our warm weather standby of selling items at flea markets on the weekends. Very little of that time together was spent doing leisure activities. He had his interests and I had mine and they rarely overlapped. Star Trek was the exception to that rule. He loved Kirk, I loved Spock, and we both cracked up at Bones and his crazy drama. Scotty’s voice would give us both a smile now and then as well. He’d often look over at me at the start of the away missions and ask “which one won’t make it back from this trip, Sam?” I would, of course, call out “the guy in the red shirt!” and we’d have a good laugh when he immediately got shot or fell or whatever was on tap to befall the poor red shirts of that particular episode.  This anniversary is bittersweet for me. I lost my father three years ago and haven’t been able to watch since without overwhelming sadness. Perhaps this year will be the year I can watch with more fondness than sadness. Perhaps.

Patricia Vollmer: My first memories of Star Trek would have been the TOS reruns I’d occasionally watch with my family while I was growing up. It didn’t hold the same command of my attention and fandom as Star Wars had while I was a kid, but I found the show enjoyable nonetheless. My best friend growing up was (still is) a Trekkie, and she was never caught without a copy of one of the books, or some fan fiction, in her hand when we were in middle and high school.

And then I married a Trekkie. My husband of 21 years isn’t necessarily at the Klingon-speaking level of fandom, but still, he knows the TOS episodes, actors, and movies quite well. One of our first dates in 1994 was to see Generations in the theater while we were in college. We are now a house-divided. Since I am a ginormous Star Wars fan, he and I have had our share of arguments about which fandom is better: Is it Star Trek because of its ethics of space exploration and more-realistic science or Star Wars because of its parables of good vs. evil?

So what does Star Trek mean to me? It means something to share with my husband. Today, he and I share Star Trek with our two sons in the form of the J.J. Abrams reboot movies and reruns of The Next Generation on BBC America, which we all enjoy immensely. (And we have also shared Star Wars with our sons, from Clone Wars to LEGO Star Wars to The Force Awakens.)

Rob Huddleston: My earliest memory of Star Trek was coming home from school. My mom would be in the kitchen making dinner, and watching it on the little black-and-white TV we had in the kitchen. I remember standing in line at the theater with my parents, waiting to get in to see Wrath of Khan, and wondering why almost everyone was leaving the earlier showing with tears in their eyes.

Star Trek became more important to me in high school, though, because by happy coincidence The Next Generation mirrored my relationship with the woman who would become my wife. The first episode came on shortly after we began dating, and for some reason, this girl who wasn’t into science fiction at all was willing to come over and hang out with me to watch it. It became a weekly thing for us, sitting on the couch downstairs each week. While she still disavows any claim to nerddom, she happily accompanied me to the early cons that were in Denver, which included us accidentally riding an elevator with George Takei and getting to see the first-ever screening of the second part of The Best of Both Worlds.

The show that began almost simultaneously with the beginning of our relationship ended close to our next big milestone: we watched, along with our friends, in 1994 as the show ended, and a few months later walked down the aisle to get married. And so, TNG was there with us throughout our dating years.

Star Trek was also responsible for one of my closest friendships in college. I wore a TNG t-shirt to college orientation, which prompted Brian, who was way more into the show than I, to come up and introduce himself. And thanks to having that simple thing in common, more than 20 years later, we remain friends.

Jules Sherred: Star Trek has always been a part of my life. Articulating the impact it has had on me will never be possible. At least, not eloquently or adequately.

Star Trek means cuddling with my dad from the day I came home from the hospital while we watched.

Star Trek means cuddling with my children from the day they come home from the hospital while we watched, or having it play in the background during those nights where they just wouldn’t sleep and I needed some soothing.

Star Trek means feeling like I belonged somewhere. I was that odd child because Asperger’s wasn’t a thing that was really recognized when I was a child. I wouldn’t be diagnosed as being on the autism spectrum until early adulthood. But, with Star Trek, I always had a place of belonging. Spock gave that to me.

When Star Trek: The Next Generation began to air, it gave me something I could discuss with my classmates. Everyone in my class watched it. It wasn’t a geek thing in my class. I had already been a lifelong fan, but finally, I had something I could share with others. Then, not only did I have Spock, but I also had Wesley and Data to help me know I was okay.

Star Trek’s morality plays heavily impacted me. The storytelling and Star Trek’s sense of what is just, the questions it forced viewers to contemplate, all of it was food for my brain. It also taught me how to think critically about certain situations.

Star Trek fueled my love of science and math. It caused me to dream. It taught me that anything is possible if I set my mind to it.

Star Trek is responsible for my relationship. It started when we decided to watch Star Trek with each other on a nightly basis. We even had a United Federation of Planets wedding where I was Spock and he was Kirk.

Star Trek gave me faith in humanity. I truly believe we can become what Gene Roddenberry envisioned for us.

Every night, I fall asleep to a Star Trek episode. There have been very few days in my 40 years on this planet that haven’t had Star Trek in them.

I can’t articulate what Star Trek means to me. It is one of my touchstones. It has always just been there. Its fingerprints are all over my life, influencing every aspect. How do you put that into words?

Corrina Lawson: My earliest memories of Star Trek was watching the original series in reruns on a black and white television with rabbit ears that was the first big thing I bought for myself with my babysitting money. There was no cable when I grew up, only three channels and whatever we could pull in on the rabbit ears. Star Trek was my first science fiction series. Before that, all I had were books as a window to the greater world out there. Now I had Trek, though I had to sneak to stay awake late and watch them. I’ve no idea what episode was my first, but I have this incredible memory of missing the “Trouble With Tribbles” episode one night and my best friend in high school, a similar geek, recapping the entire episode for me the next day over the phone. I still hear her voice when that episode plays.

As a mom, Trek was one of the first fandoms I shared with my eldest son. My husband (who went to a Trek convention when he was 15 in 1976), myself and my son borrowed old the VHS tapes from the local library. This is only appropriate because this boy was born when Voyager had just started and we had the episode with Amelia Earhardt on in the delivery room as I was giving birth to him. Now my youngest daughter is finally watching. Of course, we started her with “The Trouble with Tribbles.” Trek has been part of the glue that binds our family together.

The National Park Service officially turns 100 this Thursday, August 25, and in celebration of this, the Park Service is offering free admission to all 124 of its properties that normally charge a fee. That means if you live within a reasonable distance of Yellowstone, or the Grand Canyon, or Fort McHenry, or any other NPS park listed here, take some time out of your weekend and go see them. Normally, they’re well worth paying for (and it’s worth pointing out that those entrance fees pay for the parks to remain open), but free is always good, right? The free birthday weekend runs from Thursday, August 25 through Sunday, August 28.

It’s also worth remembering that fourth graders get into National Parks for free all year.

If you’ve never heard of it, I’ll forgive you. It seems that between Siblings Day, Talk Like a Pirate Day, and National Cereal Day, International Tabletop Day can easily get lost in the mix between a deluge of countless other made up holidays. However, if you’re a geek like me, then Tabletop Day is a priority. Started in 2012, following the success of Geek & Sundry’s popular video series Tabletop, April 30th was designated as International Tabletop Day in order to promote tabletop gaming and encourage folks like you and me to support retailers or just enjoy a specific day to set aside everything and play games with family and friends.

Even though I had this event earmarked, I only consider myself a casual gamer. However, after working with the folks at GeekDad this past year, I’ve been exposed to far more amazing games than I even knew existed and wanted to get my hands on all of them. One problem I have is that I have a hard time collecting enough people interested in board games, card games, and the like to actually play them. Tabletop Day basically gave me an open pass to access something that seemed just out of reach.

While there were a couple comic book stores celebrating Tabletop day closer to me, I chose to travel to a large new store I recently discovered, Meeple Madness in Braselton, Georgia. Compared to those comic shops that happened to stock games in addition to their comics, Meeple Madness is a veritable gaming paradise. Their walls are literally lined with hundreds and hundreds of hobby games, board games, RPGs, cards, supplies, and the like. I would be participating in Tabletop Day in style!

Upon arrival, I knew I wouldn’t have a hard time finding someone to play games with since the parking lot was packed. Sure enough, when I entered, there were tons of people filling the space. Folks from all walks of life were there including several members of a Boy Scout troop. Tables were obviously at a premium. The lack of space at first gave me the perfect opportunity to take the first part of the day in stride and stroll around to leisurely checking out the variety of games being played. A father and son were playing Pokémon, there was a group of young men playing Warhammer in the back, and a family was embroiled in a fierce competition on some unknown board game. So many choices, but I knew where I would start.

1. Cosmic Encounter
   Walking around, I was thrilled to see a group just starting this game. I had only previously played this classic late night during Dragon Con and neither my friends nor I had ever played before. We tried to follow the rules directly from the rulebook as best as we could, but although we muddled through the game that first time, it was laborious and I knew we just hadn’t reached the game’s full potential. Fortunately, the group I stumbled upon at Meeple Madness were experienced players for the most part, and they graciously allowed me to watch. (The tried to get me to join, but I politely declined, instead wanting to watch from the sidelines to learn the rules). I was right in my suspicions, the game is much more fun and easier to learn when you have someone already skilled running the show.For those not familiar, Cosmic Encounter is a game where you try to “encounter” other player’s planets with your own alien ships to colonize them. The number of attacking ships you have compared to your opponents, along with different cards in your hand, help you reach the required number of conquered planets to win the game. In addition to some of the more nuanced rules, the aspect of the game my friends from Dragon Con and I missed out on the first time around was negotiation. Relying on your friends to help you attack another player or defend your own planet is really fun, and my new group was really into the fun of negotiating and the subsequent betrayal later in the game. I didn’t pick up a copy that day, but it is definitely on my list for when my own children get a little older.

   

2. Machi Koro
   After thanking my new friends, I met up with my friend and Coworker Shannon and his son Jacob to play a game. After I watched them finish their game of Splendor, they suggested we all play a game called Machi Koro. It was hard for me to not roll my eyes when Shannon suggested this. It seems Machi Koro is everywhere I look: Target, Books-A-Million, my Amazon suggestions. Geez, I get it! It’s popular! Leave me alone! However, every time I tried to get on board and read up on the game to see if I would like it, it just sounded very unappealing to me. Oh well, what I won’t do for a friend. The basic idea of this card game is to try and use cards representing resources in a town to earn coins to buy certain businesses. I know, sounds riveting, right? Well, trust me, I had to swallow my own pride and admit it – this game is fun! You start with basic cards (such as a wheat field) that allow you to earn a small amount of coins in the early rounds which you use to purchase other cards (like bakery or forest) to earn different awards later on. The number you roll on the dice determines which card’s payout you collect. Earn enough to construct your shopping mall, train station, radio tower, and amusement park, and you win the game! I have heard this game compared to “easier, faster, Dominion,” and I have to agree. I really enjoyed this one, and will definitely be picking this one up. With some coaching, I think my seven-year-old daughter could easily pick up the rules. Although I have to be careful. This is the type of game where it could move certain personalities to tyranny.

   

3. Terror in Meeple City
   After a break for some amazing BBQ, we played a game I have had my eye on for a while now – Terror in Meeple City. Originally titled Rampage, the game publishers changed the name due to pressure from the makers of the popular arcade game that shares many of the same elements. Yep, destroy buildings, throw cars, eat people…a perfectly fun family activity! Honestly, after playing Machi Koro, I was doubtful that any other game I played this Saturday would top it. Terror in Meeple City fittingly destroyed the competition. Terror was unlike any game I had ever played before. There were no dice to determine your moves, everything takes place in a physical world. To play, you use your fingers to flick a marker where you’ll place your dinosaur figure to enact damage to the city. Over the course of the game, you’ll drop your wooden dinosaur token on top of meeple-stacked “buildings,” flick wooden cars off of the top of your token’s head, and place your own chin on your game piece and literally try to blow the competition away. the only cards you have are to assign you character traits, special powers, and a goal. To win the game you add up points for combinations of meeples eaten, loose teeth, and crushed floors from destroyed buildings.As I said, the gameplay was unlike that of anything I had ever played before. I really enjoyed the different strategies involved in not just destroying the city, but outsmarting and defeating the other players. I was also thrilled because I really think that this game will find universal appeal in my family filled with casual gamers and a reluctant spouse. The rules are easy enough that I don’t think I’d have to refer to them after my Tabletop Day initiation. Plus, did I mention you get to smash stuff and “eat” imaginary people? My inner 10-year old could not stop smiling from delight.

Before I left, I did end up playing one more game, but it was one I already owned: Friday the 13th. I actually suggested it so I could teach it to a young lady who was bummed she arrived too late to get in on our Terror in Meeple City action, and she wanted to play something that was 1. Easy to learn and 2. cheap. I’ll save my review for Friday the 13th for another day, but it is really fun as well. The only thing I was bummed that I missed out on during Tabletop Day was that I had to head home just as my group was pulling out Codenames to play. GeekDad voted Codenames the best of 2015, and I have still yet to play it! Otherwise, I had a fantastic time on Tabletop Day.

I spoke to the owner of Meeple Madness and he said that the store had only been in business for fourteen months, so this was only his second Tabletop Day. Attendance, he said, appeared to be double what he experienced last year. When I asked if sales reflected that, he responded that it remained to be seen. Interestingly, he said most sales come at the end of the day. He hypothesizes that many folks wait to purchase to see if they’re lucky enough to win one of the many games given away during the numerous raffles for games provided by manufacturers. Additionally, he thinks most people are probably just waiting to play as many games as they can throughout the day before deciding which one was their favorite one to be worthy of a purchase.

It was great to have an opportunity to see so many people enjoying such a fun day, and I know I’ll be back next year. If you want a chance to have fun and play games with a bunch of your fellow geeks, be sure to join us next month in Atlanta for the GeekDad Tabletop Experience at the Southern-Fried Gameroom Expo June 10-12, 2016 where we’ll have 14,000 square feet of tabletop gaming available (not to mention all the other fun stuff like special guests John Kovalic and Lance Guest and 250+ arcade and pinball games). Wherever and whatever you decide to play, with the increasing popularity and awareness through events like International Tabletop Day, you have plenty of fun ahead of you.