Learning Chinese? Want to get the hang of all those pinyin sounds? This is how kids in China do it!

The wonders of science! (and Banjos)

A musician who underwent brain surgery to treat a hand tremor played his banjo throughout to test the success of the procedure.

Eddie Adcock is one of the pillars of Bluegrass Music and realised his tremor could threaten his ability to perform professionally.

Surgeons placed electrodes in Mr Adcock's brain and fitted a pace maker in his chest which delivers a small current which shuts down the region of his brain causing the tremors.

A true story about dreams, God and talking vegetables. That's the tagline and it is spot on. What else can you expect from the autobiography of the guy who invented VeggieTales? Off the wall, yes, but far from virtual reality. A God-honouring ambition that begins to come true, then suddenly shatters painfully. Where is God when that happens?

Starting from his childhood, Phil Vischer explains his experiences of growing up and as a result, how VeggieTales came to be. He poured all his God-given creative skills into a ministry for God. Through many steps of faith and hours of hard work he pursed his dream: a major entertainment company with the aim of glorifying God. The dream became reality. VeggieTales became an internationally-known, Bible-based kid's TV show. Major stores were selling it. Merchandise flew off the shelves. Children everywhere were singing the songs. Everyone knew Bob the tomato and Larry the cucumber. It was a success! Then the company went bust. A series of seemingly disastrous events ended in a court order which forced the company, BigIdea, to be sold. How could God do that? Through the questions and issues that Phil struggled with some good lessons come out - in particular how God has never lost control.

The book is great if you were / are a VeggieTales fan, it's packed full of quirky little facts which lie behind those shiny CGI vegetables. Did you know... it started as a show about chocolate bars, they chose vegetable's because arms and legs were hard to create on the computer in those days, Bob was the first name Phil could think of, Larry was the second, Phil's wife sang a song the whole way through a sermon to remember the tune, they had to move 45,000 frames from one computer to another - 30 at a time, "Oh Where is My Hairbrush?" began as "Oh Where is My Razor?"... This book is also great if you're into the computer animation scene. I've toyed a bit myself and so very much enjoyed the references to software compatibility, rendering, transforming lattices and how other fun geeky terms worked out in a real-life situation.

What dreams are worth having? How would I react if I was in a similar situation? What are my dreams? Does God have a different plan? These are all questions prompted by reading Me, Myself and Bob. Overall: enjoyable, thought-provoking and powerful.