Dibs

The current fad in which parents make kids feel like omnipotent geniuses is not just a fad but an industry whose players include such self-publishing “print-on-demand” (but I ask you — demanded by whom?) Web sites as lulu.com. The parents of homeschooled North Carolina eight-year-old Thomas Little have issued press releases announcing that their son has just “published” his “first but not last book,” The Adventures of the Symbols, in which keyboard symbols such as “@,” “$” and the wily “%” engage in a good-vs.-evil tussle. Thomas’s father, college professor David Little, says he noticed the high-IQ tot typing avidly last year. When asked what he was doing, Thomas replied, “Writing a novel.” Dad hooked son up with self-publishing site and, 28 pages later, voila: another sad case of arguably unfounded ego-expansion. It’s not the boy’s fault. “I called the local papers about his book. Thomas wanted to see his name in the paper, as most children enjoy this thrill,” says his father in a press release. Slow news week — before Al-Zarqawi’s death knocked everything else out of the headlines, local TV and radio covered Thomas’s story. Oops, now so has Dibs!