Told you this was going to be a slow week. That being said, this just dropped into my inbox – Charlie Rose’s 45-minute interview with President Obama airs tonight on PBS, check your local listings for times.
Rose is a terrific interviewer and you’ll seldom see one this long with a sitting president.
How do I know it’s time for Summer Reading Programs? Besides the calendar and the gnashing of parental teeth as they go over their kids’ summer reading list and see nothing but angst trying to get their kids to read the books on said list? My Inbox is filled with press releases on the latest apps to get your kids reading and fight against “Summer Brain Drain.”
Sigh.
My gut response to the horror of Summer Brain Drain is that sometimes a little brain draining is a good thing. I get that it is a decided problem when the first third of your already too short school year is spent bringing kids back to where they were last spring. But at the same time, kids need time to relax and just have fun – just like we grown ups do and too often don’t. This constant focus on productivity and nose to the grindstone work ethic is not only hard on our bodies and our mental health, it turns out, it puts the major hurt on our productivity.
I personally hate summer reading lists. It is true that, as a kid, I was introduced to a couple great books that way. But by and large the required books on whatever list turned out to be the biggest bores on the planet. And this was supposed to turn me on to reading? Fortunately, I loved to read, but I can only imagine how hard it was for kids who hated and/or struggled with reading. Then when my own daughter came along, it was the same story – she loved to read but was so bored and put off by the books on the summer reading list that it was a constant struggle to get her to read them.
The problem is, summer is the perfect time for reading – when else are you going to have time to slog through the entire Harry Potter series in one sitting? Too hot and humid to go out and play? Time to dive head-first into The Babysitters Club or… I forget what the hot series for pre-teens is nowadays.
Plus there’s that whole brain drain thing. Reading may not help your kid retain the fundamentals of long division and fractions, but it will keep his brain sharp enough that he’ll pick them up again quickly when he gets back to school.
Plus there is one other thing that reading can do that video and apps can’t – it stimulates the imagination. With reading, you have to imagine that toad-like grin on Professor Dolores Umbridge’s face and her tiny little cough. Imelda Staunton was great in the two movies, but it wasn’t the same as seeing and hearing it in your own brain.
I’m not knocking apps and film and video – they are marvelous forms of media in their own right. But they are not perfect and they simply cannot provide the depth that reading can and they cannot stimulate the imagination the way reading does.
Or just laying around. Or playing energetically outside. Or just having hours and hours of free time to fill and no direction on how to fill it, except that you only have two hours of screen time which must be shared with a sibling or two.
Thinking creatively will probably be one of the most sought-after skills in the coming years, and thanks to an over-reliance on TV, our kids are not getting any exercise in that direction.
Summer reading lists aren’t the only way to get your kids reading. Finding books about things they’re interested in is a great way to start. If your kid loves video games, find stories related or similar to the games they’re playing. There are books about their favorite TV stars. Or their favorite sports stars.
Read to them and let them read to you. Let them see you reading for the fun of it. But most importantly, find them books and stories and even non-fiction about the stuff they like already. A kid who loves playing and watching sports is not going to want to read about dragons and wizards. But maybe she’ll get into a book on how to improve her soccer game or a biography of Mia Hamm.
And turn off the TV. Yes, there are times to leave it on, such as the fifth rainy day in a row and the pile from the library has been gone through twice. Or an all-night movie marathon that you’re all sharing together. But it mostly needs to stay off and there isn’t that much on this time of year, anyway.
Turn off the video games and the apps. Even if they’re educational apps, what your kids need at least as much, if not more, is unstructured time to let their brains drain a little and instead fill up with the impossible, the silly, the sheer joy of not having to learn. Oddly enough, that’s often when they learn the most.
Avan Jogia, Sam Robards and Mddie Hasson, courtesy Disney TV Networks
TWISTED
Friendly Rating: Pre-teen and teen girls
Safety Rating: One randy teen girl, bullying, mild language and a bloodied body
Quality Rating: Blech
New series premieres tonight at 9 p.m. on ABCFamily.
Given the success of Pretty Little Liars, I suppose ABCFamily decided they needed another drama about brooding teens with murderous secrets. I’m not sure why because this one is as flat as week-old soda.
Danny Desai (Avan Jogia) is forced to return to his old home town after serving five years in juvenile detention for the murder of his aunt. While reaching out to his two former best friends Jo (Maddie Hasson) and Lacey (Kylie Bunbury), he discovers that they’re less than thrilled to see him. Nor is the rest of the high school, who unilaterally dub him “Socio,” as in sociopath.
Safety-wise, depending on the ages of your kids, you may want to monitor this one. The worst word heard is ass, but the one girl who ends up dead was strongly coming on to Danny, plus she gets called a slut. And we do get a close up of her bloodied body, however, that’s the extent of the violence. At least in this episode.
One good thing about the show is that it could spark some conversation about how hard it is for people who’ve served time to be accepted back into society. Even though several people acknowledge that Danny has paid his debt, more or less, many, many more refuse to believe that he’s been rehabilitated and treat him accordingly.
Obviously, part of the ongoing mystery is whether or not he is, but frankly, by the time I got to the middle of the episode, I didn’t really care. And still don’t. Your kids may think otherwise.
Rebecca Romijn and Jon Tenney, courtesy Turner Networks
KING & MAXWELL
Friendly Rating: Elementary age and up
Safety Rating: Some sexy photos, a couple stiffs, guns shooting
Quality Rating: Mostly likeable, thanks to solid characterizations
New series premieres tonight at 10 p.m. on TNT.
What whodunit King & Maxwell mostly has going for it is the charm of its two main characters Sean King (Jon Tenney) and Michelle Maxwell (Rebecca Romijn), a couple of former Secret Service agents who have left the service and become private investigators. The show is based on the series of books by David Baldacci, which I have not read, but now might.
Safety-wise, there is a fair amount of violence, but it’s not terribly gruesome. We start with a car chasing a bus and it rolls over, some sexy photos are flashed, then we see a couple stiffs. There is plenty of gunfire, but we don’t see anyone actually get hit – the two stiffs got that way off screen.
Besides Tenney and Romijn pleasantly bickering – it’s the sort of thing where you have two people who genuinely like and respect each other, but love teasing – there is also some flavor of the old-style P.I. fiction, with both King and Maxwell smarting off to a couple humorless FBI agents and showing them up (sort of). Also, it holds to the traditional whodunit rules by introducing the killer early on, but in a way that we don’t suspect.
Given the late hour at which the show airs and the way these things often go, it could get sexy, it could get more violent (I hope not). So if you have a mystery fan in your household and the media is rather low on violent content, this might be an option, albeit one you’ll probably want to monitor first.
Niall Matter, courtesy NBC/Universal
PRIMEVAL NEW WORLD
Friendly Rating: All ages will want to see the dinosaurs
Safety Rating: Some blood and gross bodies, and the dinos are pretty scary
Quality Rating: True Believers from the original may not like it, but it worked for me
New series premieres tonight (June 8) on Syfy at 8 p.m.
A stray thought that hit me while watching this apparent spin-off of the original British series about a series of anomalies in the time-space fabric that have allowed dinosaurs to come rampaging through into our modern world – why is it always the nasty predators that show up in these things? Why not some pleasant stegosauri or triceratops?
Now that I think about it, there may have been some nice dinos in the original Primeval, but it’s been a while since I watched the show. I liked the original, but couldn’t find time to watch it after it starting airing here on BBC America.
This new version focuses on the anomalies popping up here in North America – this being a Canadian production out of British Columbia – it’s probably Canada, but it’s not specific that I could tell. The fact that it’s a spin-off did leave me with the feeling that I had missed something, but that’s the weakest part of a pretty fun show.
That being said, these are hungry dinosaurs and that can be pretty darned scary for your younger and/or more sensitive viewers, especially one scene in which a child is threatened. Also, while we don’t see the attacks (except one case where the two dinos attack each other), the occasional shots of the aftermaths can be a little on the gruesome side. When the dinos do attack the humans, it’s all about the screaming, which is almost as bad as seeing it.
But overall, it’s a pretty well-made show and seems to be a worthy follow up to its predecessor from across the pond. Primeval True Believers may not agree, but then again, they might. I didn’t watch the original enough to know, but I could understand that they might quibble.
It’s certainly worth considering with the above caveats.
