Blog Archives

Tomfoolery Toy Review: Myland

5/16/2016

Myland is a unique and intuitive toy for children that helps with coordination of light and sound in a fun way! For ages two years and older, Myland features a blue car with two people, a girl wearing blue pants and a boy wearing yellow pants. The seats of the car are designated with a yellow seat and a blue seat as well – the car will only “turn on” if the child correctly places the boy in the yellow seat and the girl in the blue seat. Once the car is turned on, the child will be able to hear the revving of the car’s engine; while driving forward, the headlights will appear, and while driving backwards, the tail lights will flash while making a different beeping sound compared to the car’s engine when “starting”.

The two people sitting in the car can be exchanged to not make any noise and also placed in once at a time; essentially, the idea behind this different approach is to establish that the girl controls the sound of the toy, and the boy controls the light of the toy. Myland specifically states that, “children discover that through color matching, the boy and girl transform into on/off switches” and is an excellent asset to teaching young children STEM concepts. This toy is quite fantastic with the amount of pure detail placed in order to allow the children a unique and investing experience when playing. Myland does require batteries (which are not included in the original packaging) in order to start this magical light up car, and instructions are included in the packaging for how to replace and exchange them. The company has tested the toy’s safety and has received approval for both the USA and Europe’s standards.

Perfect for curious children, or children who would enjoy engaging in a playtime with toys that include more sensory tools (sound, light and touch as opposed to just touch), Myland is an excellent option for young toddlers!

Newest in Stock: Make Day Camp This Summer Fun With Cute Patterned Backpacks!

5/13/2016

Let's Get Whimsical With #WackyWednesday Here At Tomfoolery!

5/11/2016

“Would you like any assistance or will you just be browsing today?” I ask the customer who has been shopping at out store.

“Nothing today, thank you,” the customer smiles, “today I’ll actually be looking at what new weird things you have at the store today!”

Here at Tomfoolery, while we do enjoy selling toys and books for all ages and all interests, we also do have quite a unique reputation of selling “whacky” things as well. Stop by our blog every couple of Wednesdays for our most recent whacky and whimsical toy of the day!

Today we feature out cute “Fuzzy Wuzzy Kitty Bank”. Make sure to stop by and feed our kitty, or grab a kitty bank yourself! Have a #WackyWednesday!

Let Storytime Be a 3D Experience By Making Reading Come To Life!

5/6/2016

For children who have everything under the moon already at home, or for a child who loves reading, Tomfoolery offers the best “reading time kit” as a gift for your little ones! Tomfoolery offers children’s books with the corresponding plush from the story as well as matching pajamas! This set offers an incredibly interactive way to gage a child’s interest in their favorite story by allowing it to come to life through personal expression. What a great way to reward a child for their literature interest by presenting them with the pajamas and plush from their favorite stories that they can then sleep in and cuddle with respectively! Currently, this adorable set is offered for the following featured titles:

Uni the Unicorn by Amy Krouse Rosenthal
This book is particularly a personal Tomfoolery favorite, it follows the story of a little unicorn who believes in little girls; however, she is made fun of by her other unicorn friends because they believe little girls don’t exist! Despite the others attempting to discourage her, the unicorn continues to hold to her beliefs and daydreams about the day she could meet a little girl and all the exciting activities they could do together. The story then turns around to focus on a little girl who is in the same exact situation, in which she believes in unicorns and is made fun of for thinking they are real. Despite the teasing, she as well continues to believe in unicorns and wishes for one to have as a friend. Ideally, this would be an excellent gift to read to a child who has an imaginative mind and then present them with the unicorn plush after reading the story, so that they can have their own unicorn friend too! This book teaches great morals early on, showing children the importance of staying true to who you are and what you believe in while also not allowing others to discourage you or make you upset.

Goodnight, Goodnight, Construction Site by Sherri Duskey Rinker and Tom Lichtenheld
The book is written in rhyme, making for a fun and exciting story to read! The story follows different trucks that would be found on a typical construction site, such as a crane, cement mixer, and a dump truck. By bringing the construction site to life it follows each truck’s daily activities, essentially teaching a child what each truck on a construction site is used for. This story also teaches great morals along the way, showing how each truck is unique in what they do yet still are incredibly helpful to the construction sites as they come and work together. Also, each truck is described as working hard, finishing their tasks, and sleeping rested while feeling accomplished for what they have done to give a helping hand. This book is excellent for children who love trucks, and the corresponding doll is the excavator featured on the front cover, which will be great as a truck to play with or a soft sleep time friend!

Pete the Cat: The Wheels on the Bus by James Dean
While this particular story is illustrated in the sing-song way of the classic “the Wheels on the Bus” chant featuring unique aspects to it being Pete the Cat who is driving the bus, this is not the only Pete the Cat book the store offers! In fact, Pete the Cat is incredibly iconic and is featured in many different stories doing different things and in many different types of books such as Pete the Cat: The Wheels on the Bus, a simple book for reading to a child younger than four, but also books for older children learning how to read who are ready to finally read books on their own. For children who just so happen to love cats, Pete the Cat is an excellent choice and the books featuring him are offered in a very wide selection, with the featured plush being none other than Pete the Cat himself!

Don’t forget to stop by over the weekend, we’d love to have you visit! As this weekend will be the last two days of Children’s Book Week, make sure to take advantage of the last two days of our featured sales and events:

Buy two books in our vast selection of books here at Tomfoolery and get the third book purchased discounted at 50% off!
Donate four used books to our store and be entered into a drawing (every set of four books is considered one entry) for a $100 Tomfoolery gift card! All books donated will be given to local schools in need.
For any of our books here at Tomfoolery in which we sell the corresponding plush doll from the book, purchase the book and receive 20% off the corresponding plush doll!

Stop By Tomfoolery and Grab a Golden Book!

5/5/2016

Little Golden Books is a series of popular children’s books and old tale classics that sold almost fifteen million copies by 2001! They were first published in 1942, where they were sold for a mere $0.25 each. This series of books have become a distinctive piece of childhood for generations, and many of their stories include popular children icons that are featured in big productions such as Disney.

Tomfoolery holds over forty-five different selections of Little Golden Book featured titles, including 101 Dalmatians, the Jungle Book, and Old MacDonald Had a Farm. Make sure to stop by and check out our selection of Little Golden Books if you are looking for a classic tale and a daring adventure while reading!

In honor of our selection of the Little Golden Books, Tomfoolery has chosen a couple of our favorites: Disney and Pixar’s Cars Tractor Trouble, Walt Disney’s Lady and the Tramp, and Disney’s Frozen!

All of the Little Golden Books are narrated in paragraph form using multiple descriptive words in order to incorporate actions, feelings, and how an object looks like. These small books are perfect for children who are starting to learn to read, as the stories will help to enhance vocabulary and reading comprehension. These books are also a great gift for children with a creative and imaginative mind who will enjoy a more specific scenario during storytelling!

Tomfoolery's Top Picks from our Special Little Readers at Storytime!

5/4/2016

Every Thursday at 10AM here at Tomfoolery, we hold Storytime! Bring your children in the morning for some fun and exciting reading with books appropriate for ages four years and younger. We will read for the children as many books as they’d like, and will make sure to be expressive and entertaining! Our goal is to make reading fun for children and keep them engaged in the stories. Make sure to stop by tomorrow and join us for some interactive reading!

Throughout all the readings we have held so far, here are our top two favorites that the children we have read to have enjoyed and requested the most:

Monster Trouble by Lane Fredrickson
This is a story that not only the children enjoy, but the parents and care-keepers of the children also tend to enjoy quite a bit. This book follows a young girl named Winifred Schnitzel who is not afraid of monsters and finds them adorable instead! While the monsters do attempt to scare her at night, she instead is simply pestered by their visits and is unable to get any sleep because of the noises they make! The little girl brainstorms different ideas of how she can get rid of the monsters so that she can sleep peacefully, but her plans don’t end up working. While sleeping one night she daydreams about a puppy and kisses one of the monsters by accident, which ends up scaring the monsters away! This book is perfect for a child who is having trouble going to bed due to nightmares or fearing things in the dark. The book is also excellent in its own unique way for portraying monsters as adorable child-like things who simply dislike something compassionate such as kissing!

Old MacDonald Had a Truck by Steve Goetz
This cute little story follows the sing-song style of Old MacDonald had a farm, except instead of singing about different farm animals and the sounds they make the story follows different construction tools and what they do such as excavators, front loaders, and bulldozers! It is a story you can sing with the little ones and turn reading into an incredibly exciting experience! The artwork following the story is very family-oriented and fun-loving portraying both Old MacDonald, his wife, and the animals all wearing construction gear, working on the farm, and doing fun activities together. This is an excellent book for children who are into travel such as building roads, and playing with cars, trucks, and trains! It not only educates the child in an interesting way on a topic they would enjoy but it also is a fantastic spin-off on the Old MacDonald had a farm classic!

Start Early With Tomfoolery's New Baby Classics!

5/2/2016

Seeing the delight of a baby’s smile as they enjoy reading with their loved ones is something exciting and comforting to experience! To be able to make a baby become emotionally aligned with a story or a picture is a great way to bring the importance of literacy early into a child’s life. This week, Tomfoolery has chosen two of our favorite books to read to babies that we hold at our store! Make sure to stop by and take a look at them while they are on our buy two books get the third book 50% off sale throughout May 2nd – May 8th! Tomfoolery would be honored to help make reading more fun for your home!

Good Night, Gorilla by Peggy Rathmann
This adorable book follows the story of a gorilla that steals the keys of a zoo-keeper and unlocks the animals from their cages as the zoo-keeper tells goodnight to each of the animals! As the group of animals becomes collectively larger, they follow the zoo-keeper home where they attempt to sleep in the home of the zoo-keeper. The wife of the zoo-keeper gathers the animals and tells them goodnight, where she then leads them back to the zoo for a safe and sound night! This book is not text-heavy, as the majority of what is written is simply saying goodnight; rather, the story is driven through the illustrations which jump quickly in the plot to push it forward and make it easier to follow. This book is quite whimsical and fun, the perfect little book to take your little one to bed!

I Love You Through and Through by Bernadette Rossetti-Shustak
This sweet little story tells all the ways in which an adult loves their child, through all of their different emotions, actions, and sides to the child. The story is written in rhyme and can be read as a very cheerful song to entertain the young one! It’s a very heart-warming story not only to express your love and regard for the child it is being read for, but it is also a great book to give as a gift for a baby shower or a 1st birthday! This book is a great option for interacting with the child and engaging with them while reading each aspect of the child that the book describes it loves.

Celebrate Children's Book Week with Tomfoolery!

5/1/2016

Children’s Book Week, held May 2nd – May 8th this year, is an annual celebration of the enjoyment and education that comes with reading! Established in 1919, Children’s Book Week is the longest-running literacy based awareness week! It is incredibly important that we create memories with children through reading in order to establish a generation of youth that enjoy literacy and creative thinking. Students and their guardians can go onto the Children’s Book Week official website and enjoy a selection of events, activity sheets, and even participate in the Children’s Choice Book Awards!

Enjoy this week not only through emphasizing the importance of reading, but come enjoy a selection of books, events, and sales throughout this week here at Tomfoolery! For the purpose of Children’s Book Week, the following sales and events will apply throughout this week:

Buy two books in our vast selection of books here at Tomfoolery and get the third book purchased discounted at 50% off!
Donate four used books to our store and be entered into a drawing (every set of four books is considered one entry) for a $100 Tomfoolery gift card! All books donated will be given to a local school in need!
For any of our books here at Tomfoolery in which we sell the corresponding plush doll from the book, purchase the book and receive 20% off the corresponding plush doll!

Don’t forget to stop by our blog every day this week as we will be posting daily reviews and suggestions of our Tomfoolery book favorites! Happy Children’s Book Week!

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