Hello, Watchers! My newest Mark Does Stuff project is here!

Just an update about my newest project, which just launched this morning, and has been occupying my time for nearly a month!

GlobParents.com

In conjunction with GlobWorld, where I am a community manager, and the Mark Does Stuff Internet empire, I have just launched a blog wherein myself and quite a few of your fellow members of THIS community will be navigating the world of children’s literature, television, animation, music, video games, and much more for the benefit of all the parents in the world. THE WHOLE WORD *dun dun dun*

A lot of what I have read in terms of parent blogging is criticism or “guides” to popular culture largely written by outsiders who have no real interest in understanding what they are consuming. They are merely interested in telling parents whether this is a “bad” thing or a “good” thing and then moving on. Well, you all know me well enough to know that I think things are never that black and white and that context, detail, specificity, and an analytical mind can all help us figure out how to feel about the world of pop culture.

A great deal of you have asked me to cover children’s fiction or children’s TV shows. A lot of you also asked to write a guest post or facilitate coverage of a series in the Mark Reads/Watches style. I could never personally figure out how to do that here on this site, so when the opportunity arose to take control of a largely dormant and underused blog space for my work, I decided to kill two birds with one stone.

Starting today, and over the course of the next two weeks, you will see a wonderfully diverse set of reviews start up about a myriad of topics and series, from the Junie B series, to the show The Backyardigans, to a guide to video gaming as a parent written by a fantastic woman whose name you’ll recognize if you’ve ever posted in the comments, to features about what sort of stuff you might be able to do with your kids that doesn’t involve the Internet.

I am also very excited to announce the two projects I’ll be tackling specifically for this new blog: Mark Reads A Series of Unfortunate Events and Mark Watches Spongebob Squarepants. I am dead serious about those two. The adventure never ends, right?

Now, I realize a lot of you aren’t parents, and that’s ok. You are still absolutely welcome to follow along with the wonderful journey that is going to unfold, as I haven’t even revealed a quarter of the series that will be covered by this blog. The idea is to give fans an empowered platform to share their love of a show for parents to explain WHY a show is good for a child or why it is NOT so good. Or everything in between! All of this is written by your peers, most (if not all) of them from the Mark Does Stuff community, people I handpicked for their unique views and their experiences as teachers, parents, writers, games, and, above everything else, their unabashed nerdiness. Some will be in the style of the series’ I’ve covered in the past. Some will not. That’s what so exciting to me, though, is that all of this is VERY new and different!

Please head on over to this new blog, bookmark it, comment in an unhealthy manner (PLEASE DON’T SWEAR THERE ARE PARENTS AND CHILDREN WATCHING), and rejoice!

Additionally, we are still expanding and looking for people to write for this project. If you can provide samples of your writing that you’ve done and if you’ve got a particularly good idea of something you’d like to tackle, do not hesitate to send me an email:

markreadsandwatches [at] gmail [dot] com

Thank you all! AHHHHHH I AM SO GLAD I CAN FINALLY TELL YOU ALL ABOUT THIS!