Batter Up!

Is it ever too early to start thinking about baseball? Not if you have little Dodger fans racing through your home field.

Kids will have a ball with the new Jr. Dodgers program, which is free and open to fans ages 14 and younger. Members receive their own newsletter and have a chance to participate in some of the team's most over-the-top experiences, such as taking the field with their favorite Boys in Blue or serving as a guest reporter for the newsletter. They also get VIP access to select Kids Run the Bases events and have the chance to announce "It's Time for Dodgers Baseball" to kick off a home game. They also have access to some of the cool gift packs.

You can sign up at the Dodgers Web site. Or for more information call 323-224-1507 (Monday through Friday) or e-mail jrdodgers@ladodgers.com.

I've Got Mail: Happy Moo Year

I love cow calendars, and I don't care who knows it. My new fave is one that arrived just this week: The Bovines in Blue: To Protect Cows and Serve Chicken calendar, courtesy of Chick-fil-A (they make some pretty awesome waffle fries, too). 

Through the magic of Photoshop, the black-and-whites featured in this calendar depict scenes from some of our favorite TV cop shows. Just try to not giggle at August's "Hoofer, Texas Wrangler" (the cow is riding a horse!) or February's Grill Street Blues, featuring an angry cow-cop who's obviously working over a perp about to eat a burger.

The calendar is $6 and available, along with other hilarious merchandise, at the Chick-fil-A Web site.

The Gift of Go

Here's a way gift-givers can go beyond the iPod and scarf this holiday season – even if it's last minute. How about giving someone a chance to become a seal trainer for a day? Or allowing them to be a passenger in a stock car ride-along? Or sending them on a zero-gravity flight?

The Discovery Channel (in partnership with high-end gifting company Excitations) is all about its Discovery Experiences, which bring to life those amazing TV adventures and packages them so that they're ready to deliver to the weekend warriors – or couch potatoes – on your list (there are several for kids, too). Select the "Astronaut Biplane Adventure," and for $495 the recipient gets to roll and spin just like Chuck Yeager. For $90 you can give someone a tour of Venice Beach via Segway. There's even a parent and child rock climbing excursion for $275. 

Search for experiences in the L.A. area or trek farther afield for such activities as cattle drives, sailboat trips and snowmobile safaris. The process is pretty easy (and sure beats finding parking at the Beverly Center right now): Just select your adventure, and the recipient can redeem whenever he or she is ready.

Contest Reminder!

Enter to win a Tale of Despereaux prize pack! Check out the details below.

Interview: David Shannon of Too Many Toys

By Ronna Mandel

Last Thursday evening, my son Coleman and I attended a book signing event at Santa Monica’s Every Picture Tells A Story on Montana Avenue. Burbank author, Caldecott Honored illustrator and dad David Shannon read his new book Too Many Toys to a packed crowd of eager children and adults.

Shannon’s widespread appeal is evident from the broad grins registered on the faces of everyone in the audience. The timing of this reading could not have been more ideal, since I was planning on explaining to my son that before new toys could come into the house this holiday season, old toys HAD TO GO! And like Spencer of Too Many Toys, the shedding of even a single toy for Coleman evokes memories of birthdays and other joyful-givings past. Naturally, negotiations would enter in the picture.

But before that, I got a chance to sit down with Shannon to talk about his new book and life as a children's book author and illustrator. He told me that as a child, a lot of his favorite toys were purchased at F.A.O. Schwartz and came from one particular uncle. One of his favorites was a castle with knights and a Viking helmet, which makes an appearance in his popular No, David! book.

With so many of his personal experiences appearing in his books, Shannon laughs that “adults start running away,” when they see him coming. His 10-year-old daughter Emma served as inspiration for Alice the Fairy. In fact, some of the dialogue “is 100 percent Emma” when character Alice says, “My mom baked cookies for my dad, so I turned them into mine.”

At the moment he's working on a book about a robot with author John Scieszka (appointed by the Library of Congress as its first National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature), author of Stinky Cheese.  On Shannon’s nighttable, he’s got a biography about N.C. Wyeth, probably his “favorite illustrator.” His favorite color, by the way, in a box of Crayola64 is definitely “the red,” says Shannon, “like the color of the wall on the cover in No, David! We should rename that color, Too Much Red.” 

Readers will agree, however, that there can never be too much red in Shannon’s books. If you’re in the market for Shannon’s original limited-edition artwork, you can find it at Santa Monica’s Every Picture Tells A Story, where the shop's owners have had a close relationship with Shannon for the past 18 years. (Owner Lee Cohen says he’s known Shannon since the days when Shannon was doing theater posters, album covers and just moving into picture books.)

Readers also will find work by Cohen, who joined forces with Carmel Valley artist Julia Harnett Harvey to continue and expand themes based on the beloved Rip Squeak series created by Susan Yost-Filgate and Leonard Filgate. In Find the Magic, Cohen says “the characters find themselves bored. But with the help of amphibian friend Euripedes,” and a trip to Ye Olde Book Shoppe, “they learn about the fun you can have imagining when you open the pages of a book.” Cohen has also written a book with Mona Golabek called The Children of Willesden Lane, an inspiring tale of Mona’s mother, Lisa Jura, and her journey as part of the Kindertransport from wartime Austria to England.