Channelized Children's Books We'd Love To See

Microsoft broke new marketing ground with 'Mommy, Why is There a Server in the House?' -- a children's book extolling the virtues of Windows Home Server that the company handed out at January's Consumer Electronics Show, and released for sale on Amazon.com. Like 'American Gladiators' or flan, 'Mommy' is both enjoyable and terrifying, so much so that some people can't figure out if they're supposed to love it or hate it.

That's a public relations victory by our lights. And we'd love to see more of this sort of self-deprecating stuff from vendors. Over the next few pages, we offer up some kids' book ideas of our own, to help the marketing teams get started.

First up is another entry from Microsoft. This updating of a beloved Dr. Seuss classic draws us into the madcap world of the sweat-stained Loon and his ever-present Zune. The story begins when Billy and Paulie's parents drop them off at their dorm room in Cambridge.

Typical enough, but little do the lads know that they are about to embark upon a rollicking, paradigm-shifting journey to fame and riches with the living vessel of their naked ids! And look out for the sequel, coming soon: 'YEAHHHH! I LOOOVE GREEN EGGS AND HAM! WOOOO! YEAHHH! WHO TOLD YOU TO SIT DOWN, SAM-I-AM?!?!?'

Ex-WorldCom chief Bernie Ebbers teams up with former CA boss Sanjay Kumar to produce a sequel to the controversial 'Heather Has Two Mommies.' There are accounting japes a'plenty as little Heather learns that by shorting the minimum variance hedge for future positions on parental derivative commissions, her weekly allowance can be $1, $2, $5 or $5,000. Depending on who wants to know.

Inspired by the popular 'Where's Waldo?' series of puzzle books, 'Where's VAR-do?' recasts our favorite sweatered nebbish as a solution provider trying to get noticed within Dell's corporate culture of direct sales. And the best part for parents of rambunctious kids? VAR-do doesn't even appear at all on three-quarters of the pages in this book, which spells out hours of frustrating 'fun' for the little rug rats as they vainly try to solve puzzles that were rigged from the start.

Apple's Fake Shel Silverstein pays homage to his namesake with 'The Taking Tree,' a re-imagining of melancholy hippy classic 'The Giving Tree' for a more mercantile generation.

In the new version, the titular Tree still gives plenty to its adoring Fanboy, but each new offering comes with a steep price -- like fruit that turns rotten if you try to break it open, limited-edition wood that can only be cut with an expensive, specialty saw, and a growing number of molds and worms that everybody pretends aren't really there.

It's another instant classic from Apple, a reworking of Just-So-Tale 'How The Leopard Got His Spots.' In this updated telling, the fable revolves around a clumsy operating system that keeps dumping important data whenever it's installed. Will the frustrated villagers ever be able to get the buggy Leopard to stop destroying things wherever it goes? Without giving away the ending: No. No, they won't.

The setting is different, but the lesson's the same in this modern adaptation of the first book in C.S. Lewis' 'Chronicles of Narnia' series. To wit: Don't be a paranoid executrix who hires private investigators to spy on board members and journalists.

Um, okay, so maybe it's not really the same.

Poor AMD. We actually feel kind of bad re-inventing every child's favorite 'Little Engine' as the much-delayed quad-core Opteron server chip.

After all, we know the market needs this tale to be re-told as 'The Little Engine That Eventually Could, Which, Thank God, Because Who Wants Their Only Choice To Be Intel?' So please start working on the new title to your story, AMD.

A little bird informs us that IBM and Nitix beat us to the punch with their 'Sorry Bill: The Story of Bill, Nitix and IBM' online storybook. And you can have the whole thing read to you in a gentle voice on a Web site.

'Oh my, oh no!/The OS is not stable/"But you promised! You promised!"/Cries unfortunate Mabel' ... we're officially very, very sleepy.