Yes, that Ken Jennings — who won all those Jeopardy! episodes and has apparently written quite a few books. He wrote this book to debunk the many, many myths we grew up hearing from parents, teachers, and other adults who were probably okay with lying a little bit in order to get us to behave. In fact, even after reading that sitting too close to the TV will NOT destroy your eyeballs, I’m still going to tell my kids that it does because I hate when they practically have their noses stuck to the screen…
Jennings takes every little things you’ve ever heard (don’t cross your eyes or the’ll stay like that! don’t swim right after eating!) and thoughtfully examines them — could they happen? Have they happened? What kind of research has been done? Then he gives us a probability rating. It’s basically like Snopes.com in book form, mostly concentrating on your childhood.
It gets a little repetitive at times, but I can tell he did as much as he could with the material. And some of his little asides are pretty cute:
“(Trunk-or-treating, for those who don’t know, is just like trick-or-treating, except with cars instead of houses, lame decorations instead of awesome ones, and no fun instead of fun.)”
It’s a quick fun read for an adult, but keep it out of the hands of your children — unless you want them to have written proof that there’s no need for you to sample all of their Halloween candy before they get any!