My sons are obsessed with Star Wars. My eldest came home from the book fair with Darth Paper Strikes Back by Tom Angleberger. It’s in the vein of Diary of a Wimpy Kid (You’re familiar with the genre, right?) I’ve been reading a little bit of it each night to him, and as far as kids books go it’s pretty good. One of the protagonists is an antisocial kid with an origami Yoda finger puppet who dispenses sage advice to the middle school kids. His nemesis is an annoying kid who makes a Darth Vader origami finger puppet who is not content to destroy his paper foe alone, he tries to get the other kid kicked out of school. It’s irreverently amusing, and filled with references to movie dialogue and scenes. It also has illustrations mixed throughout and scribbled in the margins, which is why we’re here. One scene takes place in a skate park. The illustration isn’t really about the story, it’s meant to look as if the storyteller was inspired to doodle in the book after reliving the details. Poor R2 D2 is on rollerblades, while Jabba the Hut has multiple boards. He would have fit better on…

No pads? Rad Dad: Dispatches from the frontiers of fatherhood is a book by Tom Moniz, published by Microcosm Publishing. It’s excerpts of his zine of the same name and another called Daddy Dialectic “two kindred publications that have explored parenting as political territory.” Yowza. Sounds a lot heavier than the other alternadad literature like Punk Rock Dad, which is a good read by Pennywise front man Jim Lindberg. There’s a lot of that going around lately. It seems adults these days are staying young until they die. It’s come up on NPR I believe, 80’s punks and 90’s Gen X-ers are having kids, raising them and refusing to be stuffy about it. Jim’s book was published in 2007. I read it around the same time I had my first kid, and enjoyed it. Right about now The Other F-Word is slowly opening around the US. It’s a documentary based on the same subject matter as the book. Skateboard connection too. According to NPR, Tony Hawk is one of the subjects. – Thanks to the original Punk Rock dad MC for the tip.

Barb Odanaka has a new book out called “A Crazy Day At The Critter Cafe” that features a skateboarding cow in it. She’s been hitting schools and libraries dressed as said cow in promotion of the book. You might think it odd that she’s so gung-ho on the skateboarding cow part, but she’s also the author of Skateboard Mom, a book that was on heavy rotation for the rugrats in the Kilwag house. As far as children’s books go it’s fun and cute. Plus, it’s about skateboarding and it won’t make you cringe.

There is going to be a photography exhibit and release party for the new book ‘Full Bleed’ this Saturday, October 2nd, at BAR, formerly PS 14. a book documenting the past 30 years of New York City skateboarding through they eyes of a camera lens of the best photographers in the skateboarding world, including Giovanni Reda, Jessica Bard, Ivory Serra, Tobin Yelland, Miki Vuckovich, Thomas Campbell, Larry Clark, Ed Templeton, Jerry Hsu, Atiba Jefferson, Bryce Knights, Angela Boatwright, Athena Currey, Kenneth Cappello, Charlie Samuels, Andy Kessler, Mike O’Meally, Sammy Glucksman, and Allen Ying. If you want to get the book now, get it the best place for New York City skateboarding, Shut.

Two groups of dinosaurs in two Pacific Northwest cities are trying to scrape up enough DNA to clone respective skate facilities back from the dead. In Portland, our own GVK is trying to spearhead a grass roots movement to get a vert ramp built in Portland. Meanwhile, there’s a freestyle/flatground enthusiast in Seattle who is trying to get a wide, smooth, flat surface for practicing some sort of discipline known as “freestyle slalom.” So here is the petri dish, leave your lab results in the comments. The image for this post? It’s a Mark Teague illustration from a Jane Yolen children’s book titled How Do Dinosaurs Play With Their Friends?

Paul Frank’s Julius the monkey dreams about skateboards on the inside cover of the 2008 book Only in Dreams.

This is the cover of the audio CD version of Michael J. Fox’s book titled A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Future. Twists and Turns and Lessons Learned. I guess it’s a nod to the fact that his most memorable role was Marty McFly. Back to the Future still gets credit for the skateboard boom in the 80’s.

From the book How it Works: The Human Body, published in 1997, but that board is more like 1987. Enlarge-o-rama.

Jack Smith has self-published “The Skateboarder’s Journal – Lives on Board 1949-2009.” It sounds a little bit like an extended version of Jocko Weyland’s The Answer is Never. I decided to open up the book up to anyone who wanted to contribute a story about his or her skateboarding life. Not just the pros or the skaters you have seen in the magazines and videos over the last fifty years, I wanted to share the “everyman/everywoman” stories of skateboarding. Everyone from the “40 something” pad dad, to the 15 year old grom who’s so stoked that he wants to skate every waking hour, to the women skaters who stories have been ignored or lost over the years. The forward is written by Stacy Peralta, a guy who’s definitely had an interesting life in skateboarding. Head on over to the The Skateboarder’s Journal to check it out. It’s more than just press for the book, it’s a larger social network type site.

This spread is from the 1977 Theodor Seuss Geisel book titled Please Try to Remember the First of Octember, written under the pen name of Theo LeSeig, as in the case of all the children’s books he wrote but others illustrated. It seems he saved the Dr Seuss name for books that he both wrote and illustrated. Notice that LeSieg spelled backwards is… Geisel. What a clever man, if I do say so, er, uhmmm, myself. Enlarge-o-rama.