Friday Playdate » Blog Archive » it’s educational, I guess

A couple of weeks ago, Charlie came home from school with a book order form. Remember those? I LOVED getting book order forms; I always picked out a dozen (or more!) books that I ABSOLUTELY HAD TO HAVE.

My brother, on the other hand, would stuff his form in his backpack and never look twice at it.

My mother would make deals with us: two books each. John would struggle to find two books that he wanted, and I would beg my mother to please PLEASE let ME have his two books! I’m sure this drove her batty.

Anyway, Charlie came home with his order form and we looked at it and I picked out two books that I thought he would like, since he can’t read yet and he kept picking out stupid books, like the Scooby Doo series (why are there even Scooby Doo books ON the order form? They’re terrible, TERRIBLE I tell you). He was very excited about my his choices.

And, because Charlie loves dinosaurs and he’s so damn cute and I’m always looking for ANYTHING that’s not superhero-related, I was also suckered into buying him the 3-D Dinosaur Package, which included a book! and special 3-D glasses! and a slide projector! and a poster!

But wait! You haven’t heard the BEST part! He would get a three-dimensional, glow-in-the-dark T Rex puzzle! AND a dinosaur mobile! To hang in his room!

Hooray!

The book orders came yesterday; this morning at breakfast, Charlie asked if we could get out his dinosaur stuff. “Let me look at it first,” I said, because one too many times I have opened something that clearly falls into the ASSEMBLY REQUIRED category only to find myself beseiged by children demanding, “CAN WE PLAY WITH IT YET?” and climbing all over me while I try to untangle all the teeny tiny parts and decipher directions that were clearly written by someone who speaks Ancient Egyptian as a first language. And then by the time I get whatever it was the boys wanted assembled all put together, they have lost interest and gone off to throw steak knives at each other.

Why do I buy them toys in the first place?

Anyway, today while the kids were at school, I assembled the puzzle. The one CLEARLY labled FOR AGES SIX AND UP. Okay, well, Charlie is four, so here it is!

Pretty cool, huh? And easy to put together. For me, at least, because I’m over six. Just a little.

Then I tackled the mobile. Honestly, I wasn’t expecting much, but I WAS expecting more than one dinosaur, particularly since the “cross bar” has a total of EIGHT HOLES IN IT, each clearly designed to hold ONE dinosaur. Ha ha ha was I ever wrong.

One dinosaur. ONE lousy dinosaur. That’s it.

I’m sure Charlie will be thrilled. And I’m sure I will be ordering dinosaur packages ALL YEAR LONG. If I keep getting this same dinosaur over and over, though, I will really be pissed.

18 Comments so far

Why DO they put such dreck in the book orders, from SCHOOL? I had to make a rule: no books based on cartoons. Period. They had to be “real” books. Because I am a snob that way.

“Clearly written by someone who speaks Ancient Egyptian as a first language” LOL And here I was, all this time thinking it had to be Old Norse.

DUDE. You’re missing some dinos. Honest. NO ONE calls a single dino a mobile, nor do they send it along with a crossbar hanger like that. I bet you’re missing AT LEAST three other dinos. Call the company.

You’ve gotta fight! For your right! To diiiiiinooooooooooooo! (Earworm, ack.)

ROFLMAO!

I saw the triceratops. I thought, oh, that’s cute to hang from the ceiling. You know, on a string. Don’t know whay they’d call that a mobile, but whatever.

Then came the photo of the crossbar. And I fell of my chair laughing. I mean, Charlie will love it.

Hahahaha… nice “mobile.”

I agree with Mir - you’re seriously missing some dinosaurs.

However, the triceratops is my favorite dino… wanna know why?

Tri-SARAH-tops.

Oh yeah.

Yes, Daria came home with the same Scholastic order form. I ordered here $17.00 worth of books.
Last year, I signed her up for the Thomas the Train club, but I quit that because I did not want to pay out for cardboard crap every month. Luckily, she did not see the dinosaur or Care Bear club, or I would be setting up puzzles and mobiles too.

I honestly laughed at that mobile. what really got me as a kid is when they’d have a super interesting looking boook, and I’d order it. And then when I got the order back, there’d be a note that said “Oh. we ran out. here’s pictures of hot air balloons instead!” … wtf. NOT as cool as a book about aliens of some sort written by bruce coville.

We finally stopped ordering things when my Mom realised I was reading the books in a night. Then it was “oh neat, an order form. Ok, let’s go to a bookstore and get good books.”

Momma totally got screwed by the book club.

I LIVED for the Scholastic book form all the way up to 8th grade, when my homemaking teacher (yes! They still taught homemaking when I was in 8th grade!) distributed the forms and I was the only one who still filled them out. The only things they had in the way of young adult books, however, were reprints from the 50s. I had a major Penny Parrish collection going for a while there.

I remember getting Corduroy from Scholastic: I thought about it EVERY DAY, wondering when Corduroy would get there. Somehow, ordering from Amazon just isn’t the same.

GAH!!! I got suckered in to buying that dinosaur kit LAST year!!!! Wasn’t it Stalin that hung some poor guy by his ankles from the ceiling of a train station? THAT’S what that poor dino-mobile reminds me of.

We have “How Do Dinosaurs Eat Their Food,” and we love it. Be sure to buy “How Dinosaurs Say Goodnight”, too.

We just got our book order form today, and I have to go get back into the ring with Alex. We’re fighting, because he’s insisting on the glow in the dark chess set. Because we love to play chess in the dark, of course. What the..?!?!

Thank GOD my kids are little…like Nursery School little, because I do not even SHOW them the book orders. I just pick what I think they would like (and what I think won’t make me psychotic to read ad nauseum). This round it’s a Pigeon Pack! Don’t Let The Pigeon Drive The Bus!
Pigeon Finds A Hot Dog!
And Pigeon Loves Things That Move!

I love that pigeon. Could you tell?

I wouldn’t be able to put the 3-D dinosaur together and I’m way over 6.

Watch out for the Book Order Scam: You may have inadvertantly signed up for a CLUB when you thought you were only buying a couple of books. All of a sudden, your mailbox will be flooded with books, then the overdue account notices come, then the letter from the collection agency. Don’t worry– I have the letter you send them to extricate yourself from the web, but it’s a pain in the ass.

Who doesn’t love the pigeon, right? The dinosaur mobile, however, looks more like a dinosaur being helicoptered someplace, like when they transport a whale or something. I’m in the minority here, but I let my kids get one cartoon book in an order if they want to. We’re pretty omnivorous in our reading material…I may have dinosaurs on the brain now, if I’m using words like omnivorous?

Ooooo, the glow-in-the-dark T-Rex skeleton rocks!

Scholastic, you said?

I am ashamed to admit that what I really, really wanted from those book orders was always the cat posters! “Hang in there, baby!”

We don’t do those at our house now because, well I’m mean, but also because those flimsy paperbacks don’t last more than a couple of weeks with my 3.

That mobile is the most pathetic thing I’ve seen today and I’m sure you’re right. He will be thrilled

As a teacher, I of course did the book orders with the kids. I was always amazed at the crap the book club would send. They’re just another business trying to make money. The books, however, I found to be less expensive than if you bought them in the stores.

The cross bar picture cracked me up! Yep, you must be missing some other dinos.

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