1. The Day Jimmy’s Boa Ate The Wash – This book lives in an old corner of my memory as the vehicle for several first-grade classroom read-alongs. Kid brings his boa constrictor on a field trip, and chaos ensues. It’s funny – the author never stuck with me, I wasn’t crazy about the illustrations at the time, and the story’s a bit dime-a-dozen, but for some reason this book is so memorable. And wouldn’t that be a victory for any writer?
Here’s a Reading Rainbow episode that features it (wouldn’t let me embed it)!
2. The Third Eye – A British sci-fi show for children that premiered in the US on Nickelodeon in 1983, The Third Eye was definitely not for younger viewers. This was way back in the early days of Nickelodeon – before green slime, before the orange blob, before Spongebob, before most of the stuff that you’d associate with the network nowadays.
The Third Eye was about these telepathic kids and a grown-up alien friend, and some other kids, who went on adventures and there was some supernatural stuff as well and… it was just weird. And dark. I don’t have many specific recollections of episodes, but I remember knowing that I was too young for this show while I was watching it.
3. Man Will Conquer Space Soon: Dreams of Space shares this 1952 article from Colliers Magazine about the human future in space. I don’t know if I’m more in love with the hubris or the layout. Or the underlined “SOON”. We mean it!
4. EPCOT Horizons – I’ve posted some of the inspiring Horizons artwork before, but this is easily my favorite ride at EPCOT. Unfortunately, it was built on a sinkhole and had to be torn down in the late 90s and replaced with Mission: Space, which is nowhere as far-reaching as Horizons was. Here’s the best video I’ve seen containing footage of the ride, plus a little history of the attraction:
5. Phantom Tollbooth map –
A map of the Kingdom of Wisdom from the book The Phantom Tollbooth:
-ds