Halloweenish Viewing for Five-year-olds

Here are some viewing options for a five-year-old girl or boy that are fun, not too scary but good with monster or Halloween themes. There is cartoonish violence, but good laughs, particularly with Tweety Bird turning into a Tweety-Bird-Mr.-Hyde-sort-of-character.

Daffy Duck's Quackbusters, an animated Warner Bros. compilation from 1988. It's a loosely strung-together series of stories featuring Porky Pig, Tweety Bird, Sylvester the Cat and other popular characters.

Warner Bros. Halloween Spook-tacular, which lives up to its title, with over two hours of Halloween-themed stories as in Quackbusters, only longer.

The beauty of the two above titles is that you can watch either in twenty-or-30-minute stretches instead of going for the full time.

Monsters Inc. and Monsters University. Both have plenty of screen time featuring various monsters that admittedly are clever creations.

A good tip for parents -  fast-forward (do we even say that about DVDs/Blu-Rays anymore?) through the scary bits if need be.

Alice Munro wins Nobel Prize

This is a great day for Canadian literature, and a great day to be a Canuck writer. Alice Munro has won the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Quick - someone call David Gilmour! I suspect the resulting and resounding thud heard throughout Canadian literati will be David Gilmour falling out of his chair. Or, perhaps, there will be a faint whimpering sound as Mr. Gilmour hides under his desk. The CBC broke the story this morning (Oct. 10, 2013).

The villagers are coming for you, Mr. Gilmour. But please, forget the horror tropes of pitchforks and torches. Instead, they come bearing accolades.