Hey all! It’s been a long time since I posted a round-up of online games featured in the OWL Calendar (click here for the last one), so obviously there’s no time to waste. Here are five of my recent favourites:

5. Tontie
Anybody checking out the midway at a theme park or fair this summer will be familiar with the game Whac-a-Mole. This game is a whole lot like that — except with one-eyed monsters instead of moles. Whack!

4. Cool Math Games
School’s out. But that doesn’t mean you have to put your brain on vacation! If there’s a cool game that involves math, you’ll find it here.

3. A Vine Line
This is one of the more intense games on the list. You have to connect the vines or the monkey falls off the screen — and your game is over. Talk about pressure!

2. Blockular
Cute characters + building blocks + complicated spatial thinking = I don’t get any work done for minutes at a time. Also: fun!

1. Free Rice
The game itself isn’t exactly innovative, so why am I recommending it? Well, the purpose behind it puts all the others on this list to shame. As the site says, “For each answer you get right, we donate 10 grains of rice through the UN World Food Program to help end hunger.” Answer a few multiple-choice questions, feed the world. Sounds like game time well spent, huh?

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That’s it for me, guys! I’m planning to take a few hours this weekend and try to catch up on some of the movies I’ve missed out on: Ice Age 3, G-Force, Land of the Lost, etc. Then I’ll compile a bunch of short reviews next week.

If there’s anything you think I should check out, let me know!

Craig, owlblog@owlkids.com

Good afternoon, OWL readers! Imagine for a second this is a television show.
I am your host, Craig. The cameras roll, and I say: “And we’re back! This week on Reader Art of the Week, we have blog reader Mara!”

And then we cut to a cool comic panel. Check it out:

Awesome! This panel was originally featured in a comic by “Alex and Charlie” writer Brian McLachlan in the March issue of OWL. Mara recreated it — complete with the cool robot font — in stunning full colour.

This is a great example for budding artists out there. One of the best ways to learn to draw comics is to recreate a favourite character or panel. It’s called
“fan art,” and I know the artists really love seeing it. In fact, Brian has a whole page of fan art for his “Princess Planet” comic. Neat, huh?

Many thanks to Mara for sending in the art! Like I said last week, if you guys keep sending me art, I’ll keep posting it.

It’s been fun so far, huh?

Craig, owlblog@owlkids.com

In the “Sun Smarts” feature in OWL’s June issue, we told you that a total eclipse of the Sun would be visible from parts of Asia this summer. As astronomers predicted, the solar eclipse happened earlier this week.

And, as if I’d even think of letting you down, I’ve got some footage of the actual event for you to feast your eyes on.

Here is a clip from Japan (sadly, no English subtitles):

Wow. The fiery loops you can see around the 5:00 mark are part of the Sun’s corona, which is only visible during a solar eclipse. It’s a rare sight (North Americans won’t see it live until 2017), and cool that they captured it on video.

Thanks to Owlkids book editor John Crossingham for pointing me to the smokin’ hot clip. Talk to you next week!

Craig, owlblog@owlkids.com

How about that for an obscure blog title, huh? It stands for “Reader Art of the Week.” And it works because that’s exactly what this post is about. Nice.

A little while ago I posted a manga drawing from Sydney, a long-time blog reader. I said I’d post a piece of art every week if I could, and now blog reader Sinead has stepped up to the plate! Check out her drawing below:

Cool, huh? The artist was kind enough to share some info with us as well.

“She’s a lake serpent, like Nessie,” Sinead says of the great green subject of the drawing. “Her name is Olli, and she lives in Lake Superior.” Another fun fact: Olli is a baby, but she’s about the size of a young-ish elephant.

Many thanks to Sinead for sending in her lovely drawing. Now, what are the rest of you waiting for?

Craig, owlblog@owlkids.com

Hey all. Strolling through the blog archives recently I noticed a few questions I’d never read before — much less answered. I know, I know: it’s terrible! To correct my error, I will answer those now as though I just received them. Cool?

Cool:

Q: If you were a big-name actor, who would you be? For example, I would be Ben Stiller or Will Ferrell.
— Tyler

CB: Good question, Tyler! And tough! Maybe… Robert Downey, Jr.? I mean,
he gets to play Iron Man! What could be cooler than that?

What do you think, blog readers? Which actor/actress would you be?

Q: Craig, do the writers get mad at you when you correct their mistakes?
— Mary

CB: Awesome question, Mary! No, writers don’t get mad at us — especially not for correcting mistakes. (Nobody wants those!) In fact, if we need a change in
a story we’ll often send it back to the writer to sort out. That way, they’re never surprised with how their story turned out when they read OWL.

Q: About how many issues of OWL do you print each time?
— Lexi

CB: Cool. A circulation question! We send out about 83,000 issues each month, but we have a lot more readers than that. OWL is a big hit in schools, libraries, and offices of all kinds. A fun fact: on average, each copy of the magazine is read by about five people. That’s 415,000 readers in total!

Q: How many emails do you receive a day from OWL readers? What was the most amount you got? Do you read all the emails? Do you check the email everyday?
— Mara

CB: I definitely check my email everyday, and I get a few letters a week from OWL readers. But mine isn’t the general OWL inbox. That one — owl@owlkids.com — gets tons of emails, including regular questions for the magazine as well as stuff for “Hot Topic,” “Talk About It,” and “Last Laugh.”

We try to respond to every email we receive, just as we respond to every letter we get in the regular mail. It’s true — you can try it out. Send a letter, postcard, picture, comic, or anything else to us, and you’ll get a hand-written response in the mail. Here’s the OWL mailing address, just in case:

OWL Magazine
10 Lower Spadina Ave., Suite 400
Toronto, ON
M5V 2Z2

Q: Some of your contest prizes are really cool. How does OWL get them?
— lola

CB: It’s all thanks to OWL staffers Mandy and Melissa. We decide as a group what we want to do for a contest, think of the best possible prize (how ’bout that MP3 player we found for the Word Search Contest in June, huh?), and they go out and get it. The secret: it involves a lot of emailing. And waiting. (Mandy adds, “And begging.”)

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That’s it for me, guys! Thanks as always for all the questions, and sorry for taking so long to get to them. Keep the questions coming, and also let me know how your summers are shaping up.

Talk to you next week.

Craig, owlblog@owlkids.com