Hooray! Summer's on the way! And Gateway's put together another cool new software bundle for tons of summertime fun. Mallory Riemer reviewed three of the five awesome CDs from the Kid's BackPack III. She's 9 years old and attends Washington Elementary School in Sioux City, Iowa. Besides reviewing software, she likes to play sports and hang out with her cat, Boomer, and her dog, Bo. Reading and science are her favorite subjects in school. Read on to get Mallory's scoop on Schoolhouse Rock!: Grammar Rock, Imo and the King and Math Blaster: Episode 2 - Secret of the Lost City. (Check out the rest of Kid's BackPack III including Putt-Putt Goes to the Moon and Sesame Street: Get Set To Learn on page 11.)

Let's Rock 'N Roll!
Schoolhouse Rock!: Grammar Rock comes straight from Saturday mornings on ABC, and that's a real cool thing. It takes you a couple tries to understand. I was real happy when I started to get the hang of it. It's a game about words and grammar. School House Rocky is a super hero who shows you around the town of Conjunction Junction. As you walk down the street you can pick which stores to go into. Every store has a subject like "nouns" or "adverbs" and you just click on a door to go inside. Then you can choose from two grammar games to play, or you can watch the music video. I really liked the jazzy songs about words. If you play the grammar games and win, you get a Rocky Coin and Rocky tells you, "Knowledge is power." When you're done playing grammar games, you can walk down the street to the town arcade and play different games in there. This CD is for ages 6 to 10.

An African Adventure
Imo and the King is an African folk tale. It's real simple to understand and will help you learn to read. You can read the story or play in it. If you want to read the story, Grandpa Mouse reads it out loud to you and the words on the screen change to yellow as he reads them. If you choose to play in the story, Grandpa Mouse still reads to you, but just one page at a time. When he's done reading a page you can click on all the little characters on the page and they do and say funny things. Then you click on the bottom-right corner and he reads the next page. Grandpa Mouse is cool. I really liked the story and how they acted it out. There were lots of songs, and I liked the characters and their voices. It has a ton of bright colors, too. I also liked how Imo never gave up. And I thought it was neat that they're from Africa. It's for ages 3-9.

Making Math A Blast
The last game I reviewed is Math Blaster: Episode 2 - Secret of the Lost City. It's for ages 8-13. If you get this for young kids, you need to help them out a little. This is advanced basic math stuff. There are four different games and they're pretty tough math contests. But when you get through them, you help to rebuild a lost city on another planet. You can set the level of how hard it is, so that helps. Plus you get to decide if you want to add, subtract, work with fractions or whatever. Blasternaut and his crew use the games to unlock the secret of The Lost City and stop the bad Dr. Minus. It's really fun if you're good at math. And if you're not, you'll still like it - plus you'll learn lots.

Boredom Busters!
In our last issue we asked for creative ways to avoid the summer doldrums and we received tons of great ideas!

Andy, 6, Columbus, Ohio, said he uses his Gateway computer to make his own pogs. Andy's mom bought him blank pogs with sticky stuff on one side so he can glue on his own pictures. He uses MS Windows Paintbrush and clip art to make cool pog designs. He's even used pictures of himself and his sister to decorate pogs! It's time to start scanning the toy aisles to see if you can find your own pog maker!

Mary, 12, Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, has lots of ways to use her Gateway PC instead of being bored! She says her first and best suggestion is to use e-mail to write to friends and family. Her second idea? Games, games, games! Mary thinks the Microsoft Entertainment Pack is one of the best things on her Gateway. And last, but not least, she said it's fun to use Encarta to find information about places you can go on your family vacation.

Sheryl, 14, hails from Dayton, Texas, and she says America On-Line (AOL) and her Gateway computer keep her busy. Part of the fun is getting your own "handle" or nickname, and having E-mail delivered to that name. And there's a Kid's Only feature on AOL that lets kids post letters to other people on a billboard. There are chat rooms where you can talk too. It's not actual talking because you type your conversations. But it's not like sending letters either because the person you're "talking" to sees what you type as you type it. Mistakes and all. Sheryl says it's like having everyone in the U.S. at your dinner table! And she said to tell your parents not to worry, because kids can be blocked from rooms that have adults talking adult stuff.

We're Searching for Moo Ideas!
Let us know what games you'd like to see in PC Moos For Kids. If you'd like to make up your own game and send it to us, that would be great too! We're also wondering if there's a particular PC subject you'd like to know more about. If we use your game idea or write about the topic you suggest, we'll send you your very own cow-spotted T-shirt! When you send us your ideas, don't forget to tell us your address, age and shirt size.