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Lots of parents tell me they rely on screen activities such as GameBoys, DVD players, and computers to entertain their kids when they are traveling, waiting for appointments, or sitting in restaurants.  "It's so easy," they tell me, "it really keeps them quiet." Yes, the screens do engage kids, for sure.  But are there ways to occupy kids that are more beneficial to them?

Over the years, I've gone to restaurants now and then with my grandsons Jackson and Miles.  Before we head out, I always stick some open-ended toy or material in my bag-a handful of legos or small blocks, a few sheets of paper and some markers, or a hunk of playdoh.  What I find really amazing is that once we're seated and waiting for our food, the boys become deeply engrossed in these activities without fail.  They seem really happy and peaceful as they sit with their grandparents and create.  And we have some really nice conversations about what they're making-buildings with lots of windows, or how you can draw really big muscles.  Have you ever tried to talk to a kid who's on a GameBoy?  You can shout quite loud and still not be noticed.

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I don't always agree with Michiko Kakutani, but I think she nails exactly what goes wrong when writers tackle the unthinkable, in today's review of Jonathan Littel's The Kindly Ones, the Nazi novel that was a sensation in France, given its first person narrative of an unrepentant Officer:

Indeed, the nearly 1,000-page-long novel reads as if the memoirs of the Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Höss had been rewritten by a bad imitator of Genet and de Sade, or by the warped narrator of Bret Easton Ellis's "American Psycho," after repeated viewings of "The Night Porter" and "The Damned."

Whereas the philosopher Theodor Adorno warned, not long after the war, of the dangers of making art out of the Holocaust ("through aesthetic principles or stylization," he contended, "the unimaginable ordeal" is "transfigured and stripped of some of its horror and with this, injustice is already done to the victims"), whereas George Steiner once wrote of Auschwitz that "in the presence of certain realities art is trivial or impertinent," we have now reached the point where a 900-plus page portrait of a psychopathic Nazi, dwelling in histrionic detail on the barbarities of the camps, should be acclaimed by Le Monde as "a staggering triumph."

» Simon LeVay shares some stories of scientific experiments gone awry and discusses whether scientific regulation is necessary.

» Listen to other Penguin Podcasts.

» Read more about When Science Goes Wrong

Simon LeVay, When Science Goes Wrong, Podcast

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Nancy Carlsson-Paige is our guest blogger during the week of February 23th. If you have any questions for Nancy Carlsson-Paige, add a comment to any of her posts.

Here is some more information about Taking Back Childhood:

Based on early-childhood development expert Nancy Carlsson-Paige's thirty years of researching young children, this groundbreaking book helps parents navigate the cultural currents shaping, and too often harming, kids today-and restore childhood to the best of what it can be. As Carlsson-Paige explains, there are three attributes critical to kids' healthy development: time and space for creative play, a feeling of safety in today's often frightening world, and strong, meaningful relationships with both adults and other children-attributes that we, as a society, are failing to protect and nurture. From advising parents on which toys foster creativity (and which stifle it) to guiding them in how to use "power-sharing" techniques to resolve conflicts and generate empathy, Carlsson-Paige offers hands-on steps parents can take to create a safe, open, and imaginative environment in which kids can relish childhood and flourish as human beings.