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| Father Knows Less: One Dad's Quest to Answer His Son's Most Baffling Questions | 
 enlarge | Author: Wendell Jamieson
Publisher: Perigee Trade
Category: Book
List Price: $13.95
Buy New: $0.72
You Save: $13.23 (95%)
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Avg. Customer Rating:  15 reviews
Sales Rank: 136851
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 320
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.6
Dimensions (in): 7.8 x 5.1 x 0.8
ISBN: 039953458X
Dewey Decimal Number: 817
EAN: 9780399534584
ASIN: 039953458X
Publication Date: May 27, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
Kids ask the darndest questionsand the answers make for a funny and fascinating(Publishers Weekly) book.
Wendell Jamiesons son, Dean, has always had a penchant for asking odd questions. Dad, what would hurt moregetting run over by a car, or getting stung by a jellyfish? Dad, why do policemen like donuts? Dad, does Mona Lisa wear shoes? Because Dad is a newspaperman and city editor for The New York Times, he decided to seek out the real answers to Deans questions from top expertsmovie directors and ship captains, brain surgeons and stabbing victims, a Buddhist monk and a bra fitter, and even Yoko Ono. Their father-son journey for answers to the toughand weirdquestions of life is a sometimes surprising, often hilarious, and always fascinating celebration of the value and beauty of childlike curiosity.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 10 more reviews...
 RICK SHAQ GOLDSTEIN SAYS: "KIDS ASK DAD QUESTIONS: DAD GETS INTELLECTUALS TO ANSWER THEM!" September 16, 2007
20 out of 31 found this review helpful
With your first glance at this book you get the impression that this is going to be a cute and cuddly Father and child, warm and humorous, question and answer, right of passage interaction. The author starts off by reminiscing about his own question filled childhood, as he constantly peppered his Dad with questions that seemed to him to hold the keys to the secrets of the world. The author's Dad took the humorous high road with his answers. As an example; when the author was in the back seat of the family car on a road trip, he asked his Father how come the highway was so loud? His Father said: "Because all the people who live next to the road have their vacuum cleaners on." Another example; was when the author's sister happened to have one of her teeth fall out on Christmas Eve and so she put it under her pillow for the tooth fairy. On Christmas morning before his sister even checked her stocking she looked under her pillow and found that her tooth was still there with no money from the tooth fairy. She angrily stomped to her Father and said: "Why didn't the tooth fairy come?" Here is what he said: "She got run over by Santa Claus's sleigh."
After this opening to the book I expected a book filled with "Art Linkletter" or "Bill Cosby" "KID'S SAY THE FUNNIEST THINGS!" Rather than the humorous retorts like his Father's, the author brings in luminary after intellectual luminary to give answers, that in many cases a college graduate with a masters degree would be stumped by. A simple question such as: "Why is the sky blue?" Necessitate bringing in "Geza Gyuk Ph.D. research scientist, director of astronomy at the Adler Planetarium, Chicago. His answer is a page long talking about air molecules, wavelength of lights in color, longer and shorter wavelengths, "Rayleigh Scattering" and more. When the author's young son simply asks: "What would hurt more: getting run over by a car or getting stung by a jellyfish?" The author brings in "Dr. Sudhir Diwan, director of the division of Pain Medicine at New York-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center". A five year old in Brooklyn, innocently asks: "When you have a brain freeze, does your brain actually freeze?. For the answer he goes to "Dr. Arthur L. Day, director, Cerebrovascular Center, Division of Cerebrovascular Surgery, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston. In summary, this book isn't what I expected, and I hope I have opened the eyes of potential readers. This would be a great book for a college class, or as a trivia book, to bring some of your snobby friends who flaunt their education/intelligence down to earth. But it is not a snugly feel good bedtime story.
 Enjoyable, informative and bizzare ;-> September 6, 2007
19 out of 22 found this review helpful
This is a really clever book. Wendell Jamieson wrote this book because his son Dean asked him questions all the time that he couldn't answer. Was was stumped all the time. Out of his own curiosity, he started researching these questions and here are the results.
Now these questions aren't all your typical questions we adults might ask each other; - it's definately the stuff of a childs mind. For example, one question is Why is the road always wet in car commercials (I never would have thought of that myself)? Wendell went to the experts for this and found out that because the car is the star of the commercial, you have to make it look as good as possible and on a dry road (which is a flat grey color) the car won't appear as good as a wet road which appears black. All the colors of the cars pop. Wendell makes sure that the answers are simple enough for kids to understand and learn from.
Working in pharmacy, I really love the question about why doctors have messy handwritting. That's hillarious. (answer; because doctors are impatient, and would rather spend their time with the patient helping them, then writting scripts).
This is such an enjoyable book for almost anyone (although it's definately geared for kids). There are so many things you would never have thought to ask in here, but after reading this, I found that I don't think I could have answered even half of these questions correctly at all. A very fun read.
 Parents will appreciate this October 29, 2007
6 out of 8 found this review helpful
This is an enjoyable book, especially for parents of young children. Some parts are funny, some educational and some show tender moments of discovery by a father and son learning from each other.
The book has an unusual format with author Wendell Jamieson mixing stories about his son, Dean, with attempts to answer the odd and offbeat questions of children. Jamieson collected questions from kids -- such as "When you have brain freeze, does you brain actually freeze?" or "Why is there war?" -- and got experts to answer them.
There's a bit of a hit and miss quality to the questions -- some are interesting and enlightening, some less so.
Jamieson's descriptions of raising his son will resonate with many parents. The anxiety that the author and his wife feel over Dean's early speech problems -- and their joy when he worked through the difficulties --- is the kind of thing that moms and dads will understand.
I also give the author points for honesty for describing how he lost his cool in an argument with his wife and broke the lock off their door.
Delightful insights into our world September 8, 2007
4 out of 6 found this review helpful
The beauty of this book is that all the questions come from children who have yet to take things for granted. As adults, I believe that most of us simply come to understand the world with a cool acceptance and think no more upon the matter. The questions are ingenius thoughts from inquisitive minds and it is fascinating to read the answers. One of my particular favorites are "Why are people ticklish, and why sometimes are they not ticklish?" The answer was a total surprise and a delightful insight in our human bodies.
I highly recommend this book to anyone that enjoys reading interesting but commonly unknown facts. This is a light read and can be read casually.
A Great Memoir September 9, 2007
4 out of 5 found this review helpful
While the questions in Jamieson's book are definitely fun, enlightining, and clever, it's the personal essays preceding each set of questions that really make this book enjoyable to read. Jamieson crafts a beautifully written, funny, smart, memoir of his own journey of re-discovering - and explaining - his childhood self through his journey as a father. In his search to find the answers to his son's questions, he also goes on a quest back into his own childhood, and the wonderment of that world. When you read the essays through like a memoir, you find gently recurring themes such as his relationship with his father, September 11, growing up in New York, and of course, parenthood shared with his wife. Each theme becomes its own character in the book - growing and changing alongside Jamieson.
I read the essays first, and now I am going back to all the questions and answers, which take on a different meaning now that I know more about Jamieson's life and why finding these answers were so important.
The book is less for kids, and more for those who like a well-written, entertaining, engaging, memoir that seeks to find answers on so many different levels.
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