My beautiful, scarring-me-forever mommy?

By now, you've probably heard about the new children's book, My Beautiful Mommy, written by a Florida plastic surgeon who wants to help patients struggling to explain to their kids, ages 4 to 7, why mommy is bruised, bandaged, and unable to parent them for a few days after surgery. As the author told Reuters, "This book was written with the best of intentions. It wasn't trying to corrupt society. It is not glamorizing plastic surgery. It is not intended to be a best seller that children read with their parents before they go to sleep." Well, that's good.

I'm torn over how I feel about this book. On the one hand, I can imagine how difficult it must be to explain a "transformation" to a child. If a woman's going to elect surgery regardless, why not help her (and more importantly, the kids) through it? On the other hand, as some critics have already noted, mommy's explanation that her nose job will make her look "not just different, my dear — prettier!" does appear to send the message that beauty is the goal, and that it's worth any price.

What do you think: a practical solution for a well-defined demo, or pure evil?

Splenda replaces sugar in the new 'Sweet Valley High' series

When the first Sweet Valley High book was published in 1983, Jessica and Elizabeth Wakefield, identical twin heroines of the soon-to-be wildly popular teen fiction series (and subsequent TV spinoff), were described as blonde, beautiful, and a "perfect size 6." Now bid welcome to a new, thinner, Sweet Valley High: Random House is reissuing 12 books from the original series with a few small editorial tweaks, one of which involves the slightly awkward issue of the Wakefield waistline. The twins' "perfect size 6" has been reduced to a "perfect size 4." Kudos, Random House, for not only introducing body-image issues to a whole new generations of young fans, but proudly trumpeting this point in the press release.

To that end, if you can't manage to (or afford to) physically alter your body via starvation or plastic surgery, you may still create your own anorexic cyber-waif with a little help from Miss Bimbo.

'Star Wars,' As Told By A Three-Year-Old

Here's how you know if a piece of fiction will stand the test of time: show it to a three-year-old and have him/her summarize it. If you can recognize it after it comes out of that adorable little mouth, then your story will endure. Our test case: Star Wars: Episode IV — A New Hope.

Now, as much as I love Star Wars (and I really, really do), I totally wanna see the version in that little girl's head. "R2-D2 and the Shiny Guy... the Shiny Guy always worries." AWESOME.

Now can I get an encore, do you want more?

Fortified with an Elvis-worthy dinner of pancakes, bacon, and a bit of the hard stuff — hey, just Coca-Cola! — my 11-year-old nephew Alex, in the midst of spring break, was ready to take on his first full-on concert. And if you, be you a pre-teen from suburban New York or a mid-30s magazine editor from the city, were going to have to choose a first concert to go to, Thursday night's Linkin Park show at Madison Square Garden  (with frontman Chester Bennington, pictured) would have been, as Alex said after the show, an "A plus plus plus" one to make your live debut. (Hint: Jigga say, “Encore”!)

Which brings us to a question that both Alex and I just have to ask: What was your first concert, and did it deserve an "A plus plus plus"?

One giant leap for Gladiatorkind

NBC's revamped American Gladiators is such a huge hit that MGM is going to bring back the kids version of the show, Gladiators 2000. Check out a jocked-up (because he's wearing a jersey) Ryan Seacrest as G2's co-host, unfortunately not wearing a Huge Upper Body costume like the Gladiators in that show. Personally, I'd rather watch reruns of Nickelodeon's GUTS on the GAS network. Why the hell did they stop running those? Horrible executive decision. Miss you every night, Mo! Anyway, here's Ryan, below. (Thanks to PopCandy for the heads-up on the clip.)

You know who could totally win Gladiators 2000? EW.com's own Fuel and Cupcake.

Do you think the return of Gladiators 2000 is a good idea? I only do if it can seamlessly merge Kid Nation to create one huge joke.

On the Scene: The Rachel Trachtenburg Morning Show

If Rachael Ray pulled a Network and slipped some anti-corporate-America sentiments in between her "Yum-O!s," her TV series might look a wee bit like The Rachel Trachtenburg Morning Show, a kid-friendly, progressive-parent-approved variety show in downtown Manhattan. (Well, at the very least, both shows do have snacks, crafts, and special guests…) I first caught 14-year-old Rachel's band, the indie-vaudeville Trachtenburg Family Slideshow Players, about five years ago, playing at a shoebox-y theater with a then-unknown Regina Spektor. Back then, Rachel (pictured) could barely reach her drum kit, but she made her presence known with her winningly off-the-cuff comments and chirpy-sweet singing voice. So when I heard she was putting on a show of her own, I figured it wouldn't be your typical children's hour. Right I was.

The purple octopus who offered me a balloon on the way in was my first clue. After he danced an awkward jig, I overheard him admit to another audience member, "I never realized how complicated it is to be an octopus." It was that kind of freewheeling, glimpse-behind-the-curtain quality that summed up the show. Sets fell down and science experiments fizzled the first time around, but I'm firmly in the camp that prefers charming goofs to robotic perfection. "You heard there's a writers' strike! I don't think so. This is 'A' material, people!" joked manic dad Jason as he helped Rachel and wife Tina do the weather report on a felt board. (Despite the name-branding, the RTMS is still a family affair.) And much of the material did kill, based on the hearty, knowing response from the adults in the crowd, including actor Jesse Eisenberg (The Squid and the Whale), who told me he owns all of the Slideshow Players' CDs.

The 'Pirates Who Don't Do Anything' trailer is misleading

I don't know. It seems like they're doing a LOT.

Days later, we're still having 'Little Mermaid' flashbacks

Earlier this week, Annie Barrett and I went to a preview performance of The Little Mermaid, which opens on Broadway Jan. 10. You can tell by the picture—Annie caught combing her hair with a dinglehopper large, plastic serving fork—that it had a lasting effect on us. We're not allowed to review the show (since it's still being fine-tuned), but here are a few of our freak-out moments:

• Rollerskating fish. The Heelys folks provide footwear that allow the actors to glide across the stage as if they're swimming.

• Sebastian's entrance. Watching the movie, we'd always had a sneaking suspicion that Ariel's crabby (or lobstery?) friend was, in actuality, a black man with a vaguely Jamaican accent. Turns out, we were right. No crab suit involved here. It was more like a multi-tiered Project Runway "Crustacean Challenge." Also, he had googly eyes above his forehead that were rather Cookie Monster-esque, or maybe we just thought that because Annie had Thin Mints in her bag.

• Prince Eric sang to us. Well, not intentionally. He was probably just directed to look in our general vicinity during his first solo, "Her Voice." What he was really thinking was "Mandi and Annie's Eyes." 

• Unexpected Whoo-ing. During the curtain call, we found ourselves whooping it up, out of nowhere, for people who weren't even our fave characters. Huh?

• Even more unexpected total delight at: Streamers. Self-explanatory. Streamers.

So, now do you feel like you've seen it?

Why this mom will be watching 'iCarly' on Saturday night

If you've got kids of just about any age, you know that the task of monitoring what they watch on TV usually means having to view a lot of bad shows junk crap. Even when you weed out the violent, sexual, or simply too-adult content, you're often stuck with programming that stretches the very definition of entertainment. I (or the hubby) will usually suffer through whatever show we've deemed inoffensive enough, trying to let the kids develop their own fledgling entertainment tastes while admittedly hoping to mold them to ours. (Don't act like you don't do it too!)

So it's always a plus when one of their shows has something you actually find kind of entertaining, as is the case with one of the brighter spots among our DVR'ed kid programming, Nickelodeon's iCarly. Tomorrow night, the Plain White T's — of this year's ubiquitous "Hey There Delilah" — will guest star on the hit show. (Check out this behind-the-scenes video and our Spotlight article on the T's in this week's issue of EW.) The guys are there to perform "Delilah" and "Our Time Now" on teenager Carly Shay's (Miranda Cosgrove) web show as payback for her brother saving life of lead singer Tom Higgenson (pictured, center). I'd probably have willingly watched this week's episode with the kids anyhow, but now I'm actually looking forward to it…and praying there'll be more such opportunities for mutual enjoyment in our television future.

What are some other shows that you don't mind (or even enjoy) watching with your children?

Work off that enormous burrito with Elijah Wood

I love when famous people do silly kids shows. A lot of you may be horrified by the clip of Nick Jr.'s Yo Gabba Gabba below, in which Frodo, all decked out in crazy eyes and a skintight yellow tee, performs his personal favorite ''dancey dance" called "The Puppet Master." But why? Kids love it!

Can we please all get up and do this right now? "Go crazy!" But if you're not feeling up to it or if your neck still kills from riding the Cyclone on Saturday like mine does, I suggest modeling yourself after Brobee, the Oscar-esque green guy in the front. His legs can't even bend, so he just wobbles around the whole time looking wasted. (Brobee's character description on the show's website says he is "cautious and needs constant reassurance," so don't tell him I said that.)

The tween Anne Rice

Big news in the world of books. The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Stephenie Meyer’s Eclipse, the third book in her YA series about sexy young vampire named Edward and the human girl named Bella who loves him, sold 150,000 copies on Tuesday, its first day in stores. Even for a hit series like Meyer’s (her first two novels have sold 1.3 million copies combined), that’s a lot of books. Apparently it's enough books to make the Journal wonder if Harry Potter comparisons might be in order.

So now’s a good time to ask: who in the world is Stephenie Meyer? Not being 12 myself — or a girl, for that matter — I didn’t have a bead on her or her books till a couple of weeks ago, when I interviewed her for EW. Turns out she’s an absolutely delightful lady who, since literally dreaming up the plot of the vampire love story at the heart of her trilogy in 2003, now writes books at breakneck pace, loves indie rock (especially Muse), skips R-rated movies, is humble about her success, and is grateful to all her fans. She hasn't gotten a huge amount of media attention — at least prior to this third book— so what I'd like to know now is: Who of you out there is reading her, and what do you think of her novels? By the look of things, she's really hitting it big at the moment; her website appears to be having trouble dealing with all the legions currently flocking to it. So I know you Meyer mavens are here online, somewhere.

Hannah Montana: Cyberporn queen?

Disney's squeaky-clean tween queen may be helping your kids download porn or worse. The virus and spyware experts at McAfee did some research to find the pop-culture search-engine queries whose results are most likely to lead unwitting users to the most infectious pages, and they found, for instance, that the most dangerous search query among currently popular songs is for "Life's What You Make It" by Hannah Montana (Miley Cyrus, pictured.) Kids who type that into their search engine in the hope of finding downloadable music, photos, and ringtones are most likely to wind up infecting their PCs with redirects to porn sites or data-stealing spyware that enables identity theft.

McAfee research analyst Shane Keats tells PopWatch that scammers closely follow popular culture in order to target kids and other naive and inexperienced Web surfers. "When they first get to an offer for a Hannah Montana screensaver, they just click yes. Three or four clicks later, they've got a single image of Hannah Montana that may or may not be legal, and they're also going to give themselves porno pop-up ads." Of the scammers, Keats says, "You've really got to wonder how they sleep at night. It's one thing to do that to a grown-up, another to do it to a kid who just wants to show their love for their favorite singer." He says he won't let his own kids, ages 5 and 8, surf the 'Net. "There's just too much chance that they'll see an image that they'll never forget."

How Goofy is Disney's smoking ban?

I'm not convinced that Disney's announcement that it's banning depictions of smoking from future Walt Disney Pictures family films is such a good thing. Yes, kids shouldn't be encouraged to smoke. And Yes, Disney's move may have helped keep both Congress and the MPAA ratings board (whom anti-smoking advocates are lobbying to include smoking alongside sex and profanity as elements that make a movie unsuitable for kids) from stepping in to regulate movie content. (At least, for a while.) But I fear that this concession to pressure will embolden activists with all kinds of axes to grind to lean on Hollywood to ban all kinds of supposedly unacceptable content. And not just from future films; will Disney now go back and airbrush out Cruella DeVil's cigarette holder (pictured) from all prints of 101 Dalmatians? Will they purge the peace pipe from Peter Pan (while keeping all the rest of the patronizing and embarrassing Indian stereotyping)? Will they erase from the face of the earth this classic, tobacco-fueled Goofy short? (Hat tip to Advertising Age.) Tell me, PopWatchers, am I being alarmist, or is freedom of expression in Hollywood going up in... you know?

Whack Me Elmo

I'm a little outside the age demographic for Elmo's Christmas Countdown, a holiday special airing on ABC this winter, but I may watch anyway, just for the Sesame Street Muppet's human costars. And I don't mean Ben Stiller, Jamie Foxx, Jennifer Hudson, Alicia Keys, Sheryl Crow, Brad Paisley, or Ty Pennington. No, I'm waiting for the sketch in which, according to The Hollywood Reporter, Sopranos alumni Tony Sirico and Steve Schirripa (pictured, left and right) will play Bert and Ernie. I can't wait for the scene where Bert gives Ernie a beat-down with a rubber duckie for getting cookie crumbs in the bed. Should be good clean yuletide fun for the whole family. And by "family," I mean... well, you know.

Kids' Corner: TV Update!

Well worth tuning in for: Everyone’s favorite weatherman, Al Roker, in JoJo’s Circus (Playhouse Disney, Nov. 20 at 6:30 a.m. ET/PT), as he voices a giant whose laugh is so loud he can blow away an entire town (not to mention a few rain clouds). No sign of Meredith, though.