whatever stuff you need. Martial arts? We’ve got stuff about that. Childcare and baby sitting? Lots of stuff. We’ve got stuff on museums and computers, trains and rock climbing. We even have stuff about where to get free stuff, not to mention help with homework, stuff about camps and stuff about parent- ing which, let’s face it, can be some pretty heavy stuff. So, yeah, we know our stuff. And
Y
so does our stuff soulmate, Bart King. Bart is a teacher in the northwest but he’s also a prodigious author, in fact, there never seems to be a time when he is not writing a book—everything from The Pocket Guide to Mischief to An Architec- tural Guide to Portland. Clearly, this is not only a
Kidsguide Author Bart King gives Fit from a King theGoodStuff
man who knows his stuff but whose stuff is wide- ranging. He made his name with his “Stuff” series, the fi rst of which was The Big Book of Boy Stuff, a collection of such disparate subjects as tongue twisters, practical jokes, indoor games and, our fa- vorite, “Ferrets in History.” We got in touch with Bart and asked him if he
might throw some of his favorite and/or most use- ful stuff our way—appropriately, we caught up with him as he was moving into a new home; moving being the act of relocating one’s stuff. He agreed and what follows is a kind of Best of Bart, so go ahead and check this stuff out …
THE DORK ALBUM The Big Book of Girl Stuff
Anyone who has the privilege of raising a daugh-
ter quickly learns about the challenges the world presents to young girls, especially where self-es- teem and body image is concerned. Where boys’ scruffi ness and relative dopiness is celebrated,
ty simple after that. Take the pictures and put them in the album. It sounds simple, but for young girls who many times feel like they are being judged most of their waking moments, it can be a wonderful way of accepting the dork that lies within all of us—“dork” be- ing another way of saying “human.”
ou know, we love stuff. I mean, when you get right down to it, Kidsguide is all about stuff. We spend every day looking for it so that you can fi nd
girls are quickly inun- dated with images of how they should look and who they should
look like and what they should
wear...getting
those images from the dolls they play with, the magazines they leaf through and a myriad of images on TV. Scruffi ness
is rarely an option. And this is why one of our favorite Bart creations
is that of the Dork Album, a simple concept with a great message. King, who not
coincidentally has fi ve sisters, tells girls to fi nd a small photo album and to start rounding up “the least fl attering photos of yourself you can fi nd. You know, the pictures where your eyes are
featurearticle
A DRAMATIC GESTURE OF VICTORY Bart’s King-Sized Book of Fun
If the Dork Album ranks as something we very
much admire, this next item/gesture is probably our most favorite. How great is it? Well, the moment I read about it in the Book of Fun, I immediately wanted to fi nd an occasion to perform it. What’s more, so did all of my friends… and they’re ooold. How great is it? This is King’s fi rst line to in-
troduce the operation: “Let me write this slowly, so that the words sink in: Quickly pulling out your underwear (in one piece!) is the most dramatic ges- ture you will ever make in your life.” You with me now? Uh, yeah, I thought so. OK, I’m
just gonna get out of the way and let Bart explain the rest. “The idea is that sometime soon, you will be very
happy. Maybe you will have just hit a winning Ping- Pong shot. Or perhaps you just blew out all your birthday candles on your fi rst try. Yes! Or maybe you turned your homework in on time. “Anyway, at moments like these, you can try to
high-fi ve someone else, or maybe do a fi st pump. But why not reach back and pull your underwear out of your pants? (Actually, there are a number of reasons not to. Ignore them all!) “There is a slow and complicated way to pull
closed, where you didn’t know someone was going to take a picture, where you just woke up in the morning, or where you made a horrible face on pur- pose but then were surprised at just how horrible it was . . . those pictures! Then sort through them and pick the cream of the dorki- est photos.” The operation is pret-
your underwear out of your pants in one piece, but no one’s going to wait around for you to do that. So instead, get dressed like usual, but wear an un- tucked shirt or blouse. This will allow you to care- fully fold an EXTRA pair of underwear in the back of your pants! So when your big moment comes, you can—
1. Reach back with an intense expression.
2. Make a grimacing face as you pretend you’re ripping loose your underwear.
3. Hoist your underwear in victory as people applaud!
Note: Remember to use clean underwear for this trick, or there won’t be very much celebration.” Now, as much as we admire this
trick, we do have a fundamental disagreement with King about it.
kidsguide fall/winter 11/12 | 3
By Steve Lowery King goes even further, encouraging young wom-
en not only to accept what makes them wonderfully unique and infi nitely more interesting than anything found on MTV, but to celebrate it by sharing. “Once you have your All-Star Lineup, fi ll a small
photo album with them. This will provide you with laughs when you may be taking life too seriously,” he writes. “These also make great gifts for friends! You can make them a Dork Album of just your friend, just you, or both of you together.”
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