Rating: 
Summary: Uneven but worthwhile ...
Review: Timothy Burke is an assistant professor of history at Pennsylvania's Swarthmore College; his brother, Kevin, a former editor at Film Threat and Wild Cartoon Kingdom magazines, now works for Quentin Tarantino's A Band Apart production company; together they've written Saturday Morning Fever: Growing Up with Cartoon Culture (NY: St. Martin's, 1999), an uneven but nonetheless worthwhile history of and commentary on the unique American insitution that is saturday morning television. While Saturday Morning Fever suffers from a textual schizophrenia apparently brought on by the brothers Burke's divergent backgrounds, wheeling freely between nuts-and-bolts historical accounting, astute critical commentary, flippant asides, blatant fanboy partisanship and generally extraneous, allegedly "comedic" and typically unfunny inserts, it does indeed, as its authors usefully identify the characteristic viewpoint of the saturday morning TV veteran, "mix deep affection, knowing cynicism, and ironic distance" for and toward its subject matter. As such it serves as a playful foil to Marsha Kinder's cautionary Playing with Power in Movies, Television and Video Games: From Muppet Babies to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (Berkeley: U of Cal P, 1993), by giving kids a bit more credit--"granting them a bit more agency," as the pop cultural studies types might put it--than Kinder does, or, at any rate, by demonstrating that saturday morning television hasn't rotted at least a couple of young minds ...
Rating: 
Summary: Just mostly pointless rambling with very few facts
Review: When I ordered this book,I thought I was getting a history of Saturday Morning cartoons.But all that's in this book is just a bunch of pointless babbling by the authors.I had to wade through pages of meaningless chatter just to find the very few facts that are scattered helter-skelter around this book.Mostly,you'll see the same,redundant babble about how the authors did'nt like "Yogi's Gang".How they thought "Laff-a-Lympics"was terrible.How they did'nt like"Scooby and Scrappy-Doo."There were mentions of shows they liked such as "Animaniacs" and "The Tick".
Then there's more repititious babbling about how they did'nt like "Monchichi's","Laff-a-Lympics","Yogi's Gang",etc.Alongo with the mildly amusing sidebars,this book was just about what shows the authors hated.There's even an unfunny crack about "Inch High,Private Dick".Was this book written by teenagers?Guys-if you want to write books,at least stick with something you actaully KNOW about.These guys don't really know anythnig about cartoons;they just try to impress us with pretending to be Saturday morning cartoon experts.What this book boils down to is just a book of the author's opinions.That's all.I was so disappointed in the book that I'm going to return it to Amazon.com.
Rating: 
Summary: The "Saturday Morning Cartoon" expert's bible!
Review: When I saw this book on the shelf, I just had to read it. I thought that it looked fascinating, and I found the subject of Saturday Morning just as interesting. And I was not disappointed. This book is written by people who really love and know their Saturday Morning cartoons. Not only did I learn more about my favorite cartoons, but I learned alot about the evil parents group called "ACT." The way they went after Saturday Morning and tried to destroy it makes me sick. As for a previous reveiw of this book, where a person complained about another book written by co-arthor Tim Burke called "Lifebuoy Men, Lux Women: Commodification, Consumption and Cleanliness in Modern Zimbabwe", this in no way takes away from the greatness of this book. Let me remind you that the other co-arthor of this book Kevin Bruke was the editor at "Wild Cartoon Kingdom", perhaps, no!, THE greatess magazine there ever was on the subject of cartoons. This alone is all I need to know to about the author's of this book. Just because Kevin asked his brother to help out on this book does not take anything away from it. This book is not only fun to read, but it also makes you think. You learn about how alot of people, closed minded people, tried to shut down the great institution of Saturday Morning cartoons. I highly recommend this book to all people who want to learn more about the people behind their favorite cartoons, and the people who fought to save the cartoons from the axe of censorship. Viva los cartoons! Also, Kevin, if you are reading this, please drop me a line. I would love to talk to you about your days at Wild Cartoon Kingdom. It was a sad day when it disappeared from the magazine shelves.
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