In recognition of this momentous occasion, I give you a cool YouTube clip that relates to something we were talking about last week: e-waste! It seems the decision makers in Toronto are making it easy to recycle all of our electronic stuff (and that they’re pretty funny, too).

Check it out:

Cool, huh? Who knew public service announcements (PSAs, for short), could be so hilarious?

Anyway, as Elin Kelsey says in Not Your Typical Book About the Environment, electronic devices contain toxic chemicals such as cadmium and mercury. She goes on to say, “You don’t have to worry about them when they’re safely doing their jobs inside your computer or MP3 player, but they get loose in the dump — watch out!”

Those chemicals can hang around long enough to affect the health of your
great-great-great-great-great grandchildren (!), so disposing of them properly is super-important. Nice one, Toronto!

That’s it for me, guys. Let me know what you think of the video — and how your first day in [insert your grade here] went! I’m dying to know!

Craig, owlblog@owlkids.com

This week’s art comes to us in the form of photography from the digital camera of none other than blog reader Sydney. Check out her “flowery” photo:

Beautiful, huh? I love the colours and the sharp focus on the subject. I feel like my photojournalism teacher in university would’ve given me an “A” if I had handed this in.

Many thanks to Sydney for sending in her lovely photo and, also, in doing so, for reminding me to remind you all to enter OWL’s Photo Contest! I know for a fact that a lot of you are awesome photographers. I also know that a Kodak M380 digital camera is a really cool grand prize. So what are you waiting for? Time to take some photos and enter!

You can find an entry form for the contest on page 18 of your most recent issue of OWL. You can also get all the info here (just scroll down to the bottom).

Talk to you later!

Craig, owlblog@owlkids.com

We might as well call this blog post “EAotW #1” (“Editor Art of the Week #1”). That’s because the photo below is from my recent vacation to Cornwall, England. Also, I’m in it!

Check it out (note: I’m the one on the left!):

Now, the piece of art I’m standing next to is very cool — it’s called WEEE Man, and it resides at an amazing placed called the Eden Project. But that’s not all. The WEEE Man was featured in “Wow Shot” when I first started editing OWL!

Here’s what we told you about WEEE Man at the time:

“His name stands for Waste Electrical & Electronic Equipment, and he stands 7 m (23 ft.) tall. This gigantic art piece is built from the amount of electronic garbage — like cellphones, computer screens, and TVs — and average citizen of the United Kingdom will throw away in his or her lifetime.”

Neat, huh? What’s coolest about all of this is that I had no idea WEEE Man was going to be at the Eden Project until I was standing right next to it. At that point, I knew I had to pose for a photo and share it with you guys.

What do you think? Let me know in the comments below!

Craig, owlblog@owlkids.com

Hey all. Here are the results for the reverse mailbag questions from a couple weeks ago. As usual, I’m going to tabulate the most popular answer for each question, and then I’m going to weigh in with my own thoughts.

Here we go!

1. Do you like roller coasters?

Popular response: Yes — by a long shot! A definitive 65 percent of you like the wild amusement park rides, and aren’t shy about it! Other semi-popular answers included “no,” “sometimes,” and “middle-sized ones.”

CB response: Yes and no. I know: total cop-out, right? But here’s the thing: I love the speed, I love the loops… I just don’t like the ride up to the top at the beginning.

In the comments, Blog reader Katie(the author) mentioned the Behemoth, a coaster at Canada’s Wonderland. It’s huge. It takes a full minute for the car to reach the top of the first crest! Just standing next to it made me queasy.

Anyway, click here if you want to see videos of Behemoth in action. Lucky for me, the videos speed up the beginning!

2. Which is the best Pixar movie? (Here is a website to help you decide.)

Popular response: Finding Nemo by a nose. Toy Story, Toy Story 3, and Wall-E finished in a three-way tie for second.

CB response: First, a shameful admission: I’ve never seen Finding Nemo, so I can’t even tell if I’m with you guys or not. Of the Pixar flicks I have seen, I think I’m going with Wall-E. I laughed, I cried, I recommended it on the OWL blog.

3. What’s your favourite thing about summer?

Popular response: No school and swimming (tie).

CB response: I like swimming a lot, but I’ll have to steal part of blog reader Keeley’s answer on this one: I just really like wearing shorts. And, in Toronto, there’s really only one season that lets you wear them. So, thanks for the shorts, summer!

4. Which do you prefer: baby bunnies or baby ferrets?

Popular response: Baby bunnies! Again! I thought ferrets had a shot, but bunnies finished strong — they always do. That’s six times in a row they’ve dominated the OWL Blog Cute-off.™

CB response: Ferrets! Seriously. But you guys told me in a recent OWL blog poll that you think there are animals out there cuter than baby bunnies, so I’m not giving up looking for them. ’Til next time, bunnies!

5. Would you rather be the fastest runner or the fastest reader in the world?

Popular response: Fastest runner. With 71 percent of the vote, I guess you can say that answer “ran away” with the competition. Huh? Huh?

CB response: Fastest reader. Really, I’d just like to be a faster reader, period. There’s so much good stuff out there to read, and I want to get to all of it!

And that’s it for me, guys. Thanks to everyone who participated in the reverse mailbag. As always, it was a lot of fun compiling your answers and thinking up my own.

Talk to you soon!

Craig, owlblog@owlkids.com

And, speaking of milestones, we just passed another one! The Nanny McPhee review by OWL’s assistant editor, Kendra, was the 300th post published on the OWL blog! Can you believe it? That gives us an average of about 20 comments per post! Wow! Thank you guys so much! We couldn’t do it without you.

In celebration of these achievements, I give you an awesome YouTube video of another achievement: the greatest yo-yoing performance of all time! Check it out:

Whoa. That routine was good enough to win the World Yo-Yo Contest earlier this month, and the yo-yoer (“yo-yo athlete”?) is a Canadian named Jensen Kimmitt.

So, congrats to us, congrats to Jensen… congrats to everyone! Talk to you soon.

Craig, owlblog@owlkids.com

For instance, did you know that Chirp and chickaDEE magazines both have blogs now, too? It’s true. They’re just getting going, and they’ve each already posted a cool original video for their readers.

So, if you’ve got younger brothers, sisters, or cousins, you can direct them to Chirp Family Fun (for kids three to six and their parents) and Club chickaDEE (for kids six to nine).

Fun, huh? Now we’re not just a family of magazines. We’re a family of blogs, too!

Craig, owlblog@owlkids.com

P.S. A quick heads-up: I’ll be posting a Reverse Mailbag Roundup on Friday. If you haven’t answered my questions from the Reverse Mailbag yet, click here!

Editor’s note: we interrupt our regularly scheduled programming for a word from OWL’s assistant editor, Kendra Brown. (Craig will be back next week.) Enjoy!

With a tagline like “Who’s your nanny?”, I was skeptical about the new movie Nanny McPhee Returns. Okay, really skeptical. But the stern-looking nanny with the moles and unibrow might just have won me over this time. She’s no Mary Poppins, but Nanny McPhee’s got some serious magic up her sleeve in her latest movie, which opens in theatres today.

This movie is the sequel to 2005’s Nanny McPhee. This time around, the magical nanny’s here to help Isabel Green, a mother looking after her husband’s farm and their three badly-behaved children — Norman, Megsie, and Vincent — while he’s off at war. The snobby cousins from the city are coming to stay and the children’s underhanded uncle is plotting to steal the family farm. Chaos ensues and it becomes clear that Isabel is in need of Nanny McPhee’s magic.

So McPhee appears right on cue with her five lessons to teach and her one very important rule: when you need her but don’t want her, she must stay. When you want her but no longer need her, she must go.

Here are a few observations about the movie:

1. It’s got an all-star cast. The movie is full of award-winning actors, many who have appeared in at least one of the Harry Potter movies — like Maggie Smith (Professor McGonagall), Emma Thompson (Professor Trelawney), and Ralph Fiennes (Lord Voldemort). The young actors were excellent as well. Personally, I was a big fan of Rosie Taylor-Ritson as Celia Gray, the spoiled cousin from the city with a love of clothes and the colour pink.

2. It’s silly. What else can you say about synchronized-swimming piglets? Well, aside from how darn cute they are. But make no mistake, I mean “silly” in the best sense of the word. From a belching bird to a baby elephant in a bed, this movie had me chuckling — and even wishing that I had my own Nanny McPhee to cast silly magical spells for me!

3. It’s heart-warming. This is a movie full of laughs, tears, and lessons learned. In fact, there are so many touching scenes that I could tell you about, but I hate to spoil it for you. Let’s just say that I was thankful to have a tissue on hand. But don’t worry — I laughed way more than I cried, thanks to all the silliness I mentioned above.

Overall, I enjoyed this movie. It was cute, funny, and charming. I have to admit, I never had a chance to see Nanny McPhee, but I think I just might now.

Have you seen Nanny McPhee? Are you planning to go see this movie? If you do, come back here and tell us what you think!

Kendra, owlblog@owlkids.com

Okay, who’s up for a cool contest? Judging by recent blog comments and my email inbox, I’d have to say just about all of you! (In case you didn’t know, OWL readers are crazy for contests!)

Anyway, the cool contest I’ve got in mind is the Write/Right to Read Contest.
I mentioned it last year, and I’m going to mention it again because it’s cool (obviously!).

It’s a national bilingual story writing contest, and it’s being judged by Arthur Slade, author of the Hunchback Assignments book series. Here’s the quick version of the contest details (from the contest website):

Write an original story (300 words or less) answering the following question: Imagine you are a rookie secret agent with a special superpower. All of your agency’s cases involve solving global issues. What global issue would you take on as your first case? What would you do to help solve the case and make the world a better place?

Fun! And that’s not all. The top 50 entries will receive autographed copies of Arthur Slade’s The Dark Deeps. The top 10 will have their stories published on www.worldlit.ca, and one grand-prize winner will receive a $1,000 contribution towards a Registered Education Savings Plan. The winning story will also be published right here on the OWL blog. Awesome!

The contest is being put on by World Literacy of Canada, an organization that supports reading and writing all around the world, and especially in Third World countries. The organizers hope to improve literacy skills across the country, and to create some global citizens in the process.

Deadline for entries is October 22, 2010. To enter, and for all other info, click here. And get writing!

Craig, owlblog@owlkids.com

Happy Poem in Your Pocket Day! Or, more accurately: happy belated Poem in Your Pocket Day. In truth, this fun holiday was celebrated on April 29, but because I just found out about it recently, we’re going to celebrate it anyway.

The point of the day is to jot down your favourite poem — yours or someone else’s — and carry it with you. That way, you’re ready to share it with any poetry enthusiasts you happen to meet!

Anyway, let’s celebrate this special day with a very special poetry-themed Reader Art of the Week! Check out blog reader Etta’s perfectly pocket-sized acrostic poem:

Etta

Extremely
Tall among other
Trees growing in
Abundance

Neat, huh? This isn’t the first acrostic poem we’ve had on the blog, but it is the first one that’s haiku-like! I like the word choice and the sense of humour here. Especially since, as Etta tells me, she’s not actually that tall!

Many thanks to Etta for sending in her poetry. As always, if you want to see your poems, stories, drawings, photos, or crafts on the blog, just drop me a line at the email address below!

Later!

Craig, owlblog@owlkids.com

Right on!:

1. Do you like roller coasters?
2. Which is the best Pixar movie? (Here is a website to help you decide.)
3. What’s your favourite thing about summer?
4. Which do you prefer: baby bunnies or baby ferrets?*
5. Would you rather be the fastest runner or the fastest reader in the world?

And that’s it! Remember to post a comment below with your answers. Then I’ll compile them all in a week or two, and weigh in with my own answers. Fun!

Talk to you soon.

Craig, owlblog@owlkids.com

* This is Round #9 of the OWL Blog Cute-off.™ Bunnies have won five times in a row.