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Adventures in SF Parenting: Video Games are Edumacational

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It might be controversial of me to say this, but video games taught my children how to read.  Yah, you heard me, VIDEO GAMES TEACH CHILDREN!  You know that old saying that goes, “Guns don’t kill people, people kill people.”  Well that is doubly true of media usage by children.  Video games can, indeed, teach children things.  I’ll even go so far as to say that video games CAN teach children that violence is acceptable, but ONLY if the parents are reinforcing that belief by either normalizing the violence in the child’s every day life OR by not parenting at all. Which brings me back to video games teaching my children how to read.  When our daughters were 4 and 2 1/2, respectively, we purchased the V-Tech V-Smile for Christmas.  We wanted to give them an alternative to our PS2 and Nintendo Systems.  Something that would allow them to participate in the same activities that my husband and I enjoyed, but didn’t require us to hold their hand while they were enjoying it.  The V-Smile was specifically marketed as an educational console system, with a controller that was built for little hands and games that were both appealing and, well, educational.  Our girls loved it, but they were desperate to play with mommy and daddy.  Unfortunately for them, we had an appallingly low patience level and so if they turned on one of our games and landed on a screen with a text narrative, we’d say, “YOU CAN’T PLAY THAT UNTIL YOU CAN READ IT!”  Poor neglected tots.  (Granted, they also got to play City of Heroes with their Grandpa, who lived 3 states away… so that was cool.)

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My Superpower: Jaime Lee Moyer

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My Superpower is a regular guest column on the Skiffy and Fanty blog where authors and creators tell us about one weird skill, neat trick, highly specialized cybernetic upgrade, or other superpower they have, and how it helped (or hindered!) their creative process as they built their project. Today we welcome Jaime Lee Moyer to talk about how Calling Things Into Being relates to Delia’s Shadow… The fact that all writers have superpowers of one kind or another is a poorly kept secret. Superpowers are the only logical explanation for what we do. Think about it. A writer sits down and stares at a blank computer screen for months, sometimes years at a time, and when she finally types “The End”, a whole new world exists. Now others are able to see what she saw, feel the heat of the sun or the cold chill of rainfall, smell spices in a marketplace that never was, and come to know people that formerly only lived inside her head. Creation, in all it’s forms, has to be the ultimate superpower.

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On Genre’s Surrealist Tendencies

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I just finished re-watching Groundhog Day (1993) (the Blu-ray 15th Anniversary edition, if you must know).  One of the things that makes this film so fascinating, even upon seeing it more than once, is its remarkably bizarre narrative.  You might say it is positively surreal in form, dragging us, and the main character, Phil, into repetitious situations without any way to ground ourselves in the real (pun not intended).  There are no fancy explanations for Phil’s “curse,” and in the process of watching him struggle with his identity in this new world order, we get a glimpse into a part of the human spirit that perhaps gets lost in the day-to-day hustle of life, just as Phil does at the start.  What may seem monotonous can be changed by human action:  we can change what we do,

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A Book By Its Cover: I Am Pusheen the Cat by Claire Belton

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I Am Pusheen the Cat by Claire Belton Padhusheen Singh — Pusheen to her friends — starts the day like any other:  realizing that she will be late for class. What makes this day different?  She is scheduled to present her dissertation on phytoquantum felineconomics in fifteen minutes! Grabbing the bag that contains her experiment, Pusheen jumps on her cherry Vespa motorscooter and jams it into top gear. She slaloms through traffic like Peekaboo Streak. As the college comes into view, she glances down at her Hello Kitty watch. She’s going to make it in time! Pusheen doesn’t see the cement mixer until its too late. Lifting into the air, Pusheen clutches her bag and waits for the ground to send her to the reincarnation bingo hall (or however the gods do it; she was never very orthodox). Click. In a haze of strange quarks, she activates her experiment. A moment later, she is twisting through the air to land safely on the ground…on all four of her paws. I Am Pusheen the Cat puts readers inside the bell on Pusheen’s collar while she tries to negotiate school, life, and love as a woman-sized cat. While Pusheen is a chubby, cuddly-wuddly striped gray kitty on the outside, inside she’s your typical twenty-something Indian-American. Just because she’s as adorable as a newborn baby in a suit of teddy bears doesn’t mean she can miss her shift at Pizza Moat (“Can I get a supreme, but hold the hairballs please.”) or stand Chet the Quarterback up on Friday night (“You’re lucky I’m a Furry.”) No, life as a one hundred sixty pound cat with the mind of a Ph. D. student isn’t easy, but it is interesting. ——————————————————————— A Book By Its Cover comedically (re)imagines stories, plots, and characters of books based entirely on the cover.

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