You comic book aficionados out there are probably already familiar with Skottie Young's illustration work. If not, a good starting point is the charming Fortunately, the Milk, a book he worked on with Neil Gaiman. This morning, Skottie released his new sketchbook, Daily Grind, which collects about 100 of his black-and-white daily sketches that he hand-picked from his archive. It's a limited-print…
Summer is already halfway over, but there's plenty of hot weather left before we move on to more civilized seasons. If you're still looking for ways to beat the heat, you could do worse than picking up these mini-sized Zoku Slow Pops molds. They let you make up to 9 ice pops at once, which are easily removed from their silicone casings.…
Here's another cool iPad thing for kids. Osmo is a system consisting of an iPad stand (which works with pretty much any iPad but the original model) and a mirror attachment that fits over the iPad's front-facing camera to redirect it downward. Once attached, Osmo lets you load up one of three games that scans real-world objects in front of your iPad…
Epic! is one of the cooler subscription services I've seen in a while. For $5 a month (the first month is free), your iPad gains unlimited access to a huge, highly curated library of eBooks for kids 12 and under. Watch the promo video to see how it works. The books work in landscape and portrait modes, and new books are added…
Mark Frauenfelder—editor-in-chief of MAKE and Cool Tools—recently published an awesome book for geeky dads called Maker Dad: Lunch Box Guitars, Antigravity Jars, and 22 Other Incredibly Cool Father-Daughter DIY Projects. As the name suggests, the book contains a bunch of projects intended for fathers and their daughters to have fun building together. These projects teach your kid some important skills (like programming…
This one is for those of us with little kids running around the house. Watching them learn how to wash their own hands is fun in a way, but cleaning up the mess sure isn't. They have a hard time reaching anything, they're putting their hands all over faucet handles and knocking over soap dispensers and getting water everywhere, and you're standing…
This is one of those things I wish I'd known about sooner. My 2yo son has a habit of closing house doors a little too roughly, and this whole time we could've been using the Safety 1st Finger Pinch Preventer as a precautionary measure. It can be fitted on the hinge or knob side of a door, preventing those horrible finger pinches…
Fortunately, the Milk is a children's book written by Neil Gaiman—and illustrated by one of my favorite comic artists, Skottie Young—that tells the tale of a father who goes out to buy some milk and returns with a wild story for his kids to hear. The premise sounds silly, and the book is certainly full of silly events. But it's also a…
I've yet to meet a kid who doesn't love playing with cardboard boxes. A lot of them also appreciate rocket ships, so the Cardboard Rocket would make an awesome gift for them. Obviously you could make your own rocket ship out of boxes if you wanted, but these guys have done all the work for you, cutting out not only the necessary…
I've always been kind of a sucker for geeky kid stuff. I grew up watching shows like Bill Nye the Science Guy and Beakman's World, and of course I had one of those Creepy Crawlers bug-maker kits. Now that I'm a dad, I like to keep an eye out for these same kinds of geeky things I can share with my son…
Summertime is in full swing, and the weather here in Oklahoma City has been quite pleasant this year, unlike previous years where it's constantly 100°F or higher. It's perfect picnic weather, and I'm considering picking up a couple of these Yield Picnic Bags. Essentially, it's a tote bag you can carry your food and/or drink with, and when you get to the…
After Shawn's big announcement yesterday, I thought it'd be fitting to post about this wipe dispenser. With two kids doing diaper damage around the house, he's going to need it. There are three factors that set the Perfect-Pull apart from those cheaply-made dispensers at the grocery store: It's weighted. It has non-slip feet. It somehow (i.e. magically) keeps wipes from getting stuck.…
The Poopsmith's job is obvious. And for the first several months of your newborn's life, "poopsmith" is a pretty apt nickname. And so it might as well say so on the onesie.
What if Darth Vader had been an involved father? Jeffrey Brown illustrates a slew of father-and-son moments (such as "Take Your Child to Work Day on the Death Star") comically showing what life might have been like for Luke had Darth been a dad like any other. "When I was your age, we didn't even have Star Destroyers..."
And speaking of favorite children's books, Amos: The Story of an Old Dog and His Couch, is another one of my favorites. This one was published in 1992, and 20 years later it's is still hilarious — even for adults (trust me, I've still got my copy, and Anna and I read it just a few weeks ago).
The Eleventh Hour is a hardcover, fully-illustrated, children's mystery book that was one of my favorites growing up. Written and illustrated in 1988 by Graeme Base this is an entertaining and puzzling work of art. Each page has clues hidden within the text and in the drawings and the borders as to what curious case took place on Horace the Elephant's 11th…
The Stork Messenger bag from Timbuk2 is "the diaper bag for people who don’t want to carry a diaper bag". My wife and I are expecting our first in just a few weeks and finding a diaper bag that we both like has been anything but easy. Most of them look like oversized purses, or else are shy on pockets and much…
Just because it's recommended for ages 10 - 14 years, doesn't mean grown men can't also buy a box of LEGOs. This ultimate collector's edition of the Batmobile is like the cousin to the ride in Tim Burton's Batman films. This LEGO set is not too full of "specialty" pieces, and so it keeps with the best of LEGO tradition of building…
When I was a kid, not only did I have to walk to school in the snow (uphill both ways, mind you), but I also had to keep my Legos in a big, heavy, plastic bin. I spent half of my play time digging around in that 2-foot-deep bin looking for a particular Lego (until finally conceding, and just dumping the whole…
And speaking of Dr. Seuss, The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins is my favorite Seuss book of all time. The story is great, and the illustrations — which are all in black and white except for the red hats — are so great.