Blog About It

Cultural curators. That's what Maria Popova, of Brain Pickings, and Rion Nakaya, of The Kid Should See This, are so very good at being. Although at first, it might seem like these two represent very different demographics - Brain Pickings' is clearly aimed at adults while The Kid Should See This is geared specifically towards children - both share a similar focus of presenting topics that deal with curiosity in all its shapes and forms.

Brain Pickings is all about different forms of creativity across a wide range of topics. As Maria Popova, the site's brain child, describes it, "Brain Pickings is a discovery engine for interestingness, culling and curating cross-disciplinary curiosity-quenchers, and separating the signal from the noise to bring you things you didn’t know you were interested in until you are." 

 Sophie Blackall's illustrated Missed Connections book.

  Seed Nursery catalogs from the Smithsonian's collection.

Correspondence from Floating Worlds: The Letters of Edward Gorey and Peter F. Neumeyer.

From the serendipity of missed connections to the millennium seed bank project, illustrated correspondence, and topics as far flung as the science of happiness, creative cartography and collaborative consumption, Brain Pickings never fails to delight. I'm mostly familiar with Brain Pickings through its weekly newsletter, which delivers the best articles of the week straight to your in-box, but to really get a sense of all the interesting, creative endeavors in this world, the blog is definitely the way to go.

Rion Nakaya knew that there was a ton of interesting stuff out there  not necessarily geared towards kids, but which they should definitely see. Which is why, along with her three-year-old co-creator, she put together The Kid Should See This, a site that pulls together all sorts of interesting off the grid-for-little-kids videos and other smart stuff.

The LightLine of Gotham from seeper on Vimeo.

The Alphabet from n9ve on Vimeo.


KLUGE from Northern Lights on Vimeo.

As Rion explains, "There's just so much science, nature, music, arts, technology, storytelling and assorted good stuff out there that my kids (and maybe your kids) haven't seen. It's most likely not stuff that was made for them... But we don't underestimate kids around here." Yes, the kid in your life should see this, but so should you.