CSotD: Friday Classic: Hamster Huey redux
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A classic today, in part because part of my out-of-town trip this week involved a teacher workshop in which I asked why children's historical fiction so often turns out to be both bad fiction and bad history?
The worst of these dreadful books are what I call "The Twins Go Back In Time," in which a pair of different-sex twins find some magickal token that transports them back to a historic era in which they solve a problem, thanks to their ability to guess the clues inherent in their magickal token and thanks also the fact that the writer has over-simplified the historic issue to the point where, sure enough, a pair of reasonably bright 11-year-olds could resolve a crisis that confounded the greatest minds of the era.
Sticking closer to "Hamster Huey," I have also found myself, as a grandfather, being presented with cloying drivel to read aloud. Fortunately, my grandkids have some good books as well and I find that, if you are proactive, you can grab something interesting before they grab something done in breathtakingly insipid doggerel that involves an animal walking around encountering other animals. Here's a secret I shouldn't reveal: Kids, your grandparents are not actually becoming hard of hearing. They are simply pretending not to have heard what you just asked them to read "Hamster Huey and the Gooey Kablooie" again.
But here's the big news: The main reason I'm featuring this classic is because, while the upcoming Peabody & Sherman movie promises to be absolutely horrible (and not at all because of the time travel and one-dimensional history involved) the new Calvin & Hobbes live-action film looks to be great fun and is the first cartoon-adapted-into-film project that I've been excited about in a long time. (And thank goodness they decided to do it all live-action instead of with CGI animation.) Have a look at the trailer.
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