Babble

The Scripps National Spelling Bee crowned Kavya Shivashankar its new champion last week. All the media attention on the Kansas girl who clinched a victory by correctly spelling the word "Laodicean" may have reminded some observers of the 2002 documentary "Spellbound," which followed the often intense competition between ...

Summer is here and that means it's time for all of us to slather sunscreen on our kids, force them to wear unattractive hats with ridiculously wide brims and insist that they conduct all outdoor activities in the safe, UV-ray-resistant shade. Assuming, that is, that we let them outside at all. Because really, isn't the safest thing to just ...

Twenty-three years ago, she offered a "warm and soft" gummi bear to a defeated high school principal while riding an Illinois school bus in "Ferris Bueller's Day Off." As a result, she has been dubbed the "gummi bear girl" -- or as IMDB calls her in a slight improvement, "Girl on Bus." But young actress ...

One Catholic school student apparently has decided to stick it to the man. Or at least stick it to the people at her Catholic school, which has released a list of books that the students are not allowed to read. According to a posting on Boing Boing, which points to a question posed by the student on Yahoo! Answers, the young lady has started a ...

Memorial Day weekend is traditionally the kick-off of the summer season at most community pools around the country. But after reading this post, you may be a little less enthusiastic about taking the kids for their inaugural dip. It may not exactly surprise anyone to learn that swimming pools aren't the most sanitary places in the world. But ...

A pair of psychologists recently did a study that confirms something most of us already know: today's parents like unusual baby names. As USA Today explains, Jean Twenge and W. Keith Campbell analyzed the names on 325 million applications for Social Security numbers, each one filed between 1880 and 2007. Their findings? Fewer moms and dads ...

His real name is Edward Furlong, but many people still think of him as John Connor, the kid destined to save mankind in "Terminator 2: Judgment Day." Furlong made his film debut at the age of 13 in that iconic James Cameron action flick. While those who kept track of the actor -- or just monitor movie news in general -- may know what ...

The fact that a Dallas father plans to give his three-year-old son one of his kidneys is pretty remarkable. But the fact that both surgeries can be followed on Twitter is, reportedly, unprecedented. A story in the Dallas Morning News says that the details of the pair of Monday morning surgeries will be Tweeted by hospital staff members from ...

Before Tom Hanks ever tried to solve Vatican mysteries in "Angels & Demons," he played a boy trapped in a grown man's body in another summer movie hit, 1988's "Big." But in the scenes prior to Hanks's takeover of the life of young Josh Baskin, the character was portrayed by a genuinely young actor, a kid named ...

Children of the '80s, surely you remember the girl who had "My Two Dads." Her name was Staci Keanan and for three seasons on NBC, she played sitcom daughter to Paul Reiser and Greg Evigan. Presumably, many of you have spent many sleepless nights wondering what happened to the young actress. Well, here's the update. Consider your ...