You are lucky to have had Young Reader books that you could enjoy.
When I was a kid we didn't have written words, all we had were crude drawings on the cave walls. Kinda like today's cartoons. And talk about taking your books home, they were the home.

Heck, we barely even had a spoken language, just a bunch of monosyllable grunts. Sometimes we couldn't tell if Dad was chewing us out for something or just clearing his throat.
He was always chewing on something; dinosaur, mostly.  You want to know what really killed the Dinys? It was Dad, Og, the great hunter.
Dad was old-school. You know; like pre-fire. OMG, he made vacations a nightmare. We would be on the path for hours and Dad would want to stop for a bite so we’d pull into the first Broto’s we’d see and before the girl could take our order, Dad would be gnawing the legs off someone’s transportation.

Reading, so easy even a dymythyopod can do it.

ChuckRocks

ChuckRocks wrote on Aug 26^th, 2009 at 8:24am:

Hear me out on this one: the Kender represents the inner child in people.  This offers good traits for adventurers like curiosity, enthusiasm, and appreciation of even mundane phenomena.  But there's also plenty of bad traits to go along with it that tip the scale toward the negative like a ton of lead.  

It's like trying to conduct a commando raid with an 5 year old.  More often than not, they're a huge liability that requires babysitting.  They steal your stuff without you knowing and therefore that piece of your gear is gone when you need it most.  If you make it out alive to confront them about it, the Kender will get all indignant, cry a little, and evoke sympathy from the rest of the party, making you look like the bad guy for picking on the poor little misunderstood Kender.  And chances are the predicament you got into that required the gear was the Kender's fault as well.  

For obvious reasons, nobody trusts them in any civilized town, and merchants absolutely despise them.  So why would a team of mercenaries that relies on each other for their very survival ever go adventuring with a Kender?  They're tricky little people that "borrow" without permission, require constant supervision, and never grow out of immaturity.

Like, picture this: there's a muscular and imposing warrior in gleaming armor, covered with scars and various weapons standing next to a powerful priestess with the power to channel energy from the gods to heal the sick and wounded in an instant.  With them is a renowned sorcerer who--with a hand motion--could obliterate half the town.  And the fourth member of this elite group is... a little kid?  Hey, I think he just stole your coin purse, weren't you carrying your grocery money in there?  Looks like someone's going hungry tonight! 

There's nothing "cute" about Kender when you're plummeting down a cliff and some Tasselhoff wannabe has stolen your ring of Feather Falling.  Playing a Kender is just an excuse for a player to be obnoxious and kill the party.  I hate Kender, case closed.

The hoopack could be an interesting experiment, but don't expect me to go LARPing as a Kender with it.

I made a hoopak today in the woods with curious_aardvark and slingbadger. A forked staff rigged as a staff sling with the retention cord tied on one fork and the release cord loop slipped over the other fork. It worked perfectly well. I want to look further into this because a hoopak can deliver a rifled cast if the release angle is right.

David Morningstar wrote on Jun 2^nd, 2009 at 4:12pm:


That hoopack thing with the sling cords works very much like my captive release cord staff sling. Mine has just the (2) usual cords with the "release" one split near the front dump pouch. The broom handle staff is 5 ft long and the cords are both about 27 in long. The cord to staf attachment points are about 1-1/2 inches apart and adjustably angled to the staff. This thing throws golf balls much faster than my regular captive release slings, and with perfect but minimal backspin.


       

lol that is neat.
Captive pouch staff sling, ingenious.

But I have to admit I've really taken to my hoopoo.
Among other things it's brilliant for heading phoenix off when she decides to go after other dogs

Steals your hoopak and then says "oh? is that yours? I was just keeping it safe... I found it laying around on an inn-table where any thief could have taken it!"

They were reasonable books. Hardly highbrow but not quite as cheesy as Terry Brooks In most places surpassed Tolkein but then I never tried to read anything other than "Dragonlance Tales" NOT by the original authors.

I always envisioned, based on the text, the hoopak to look like a giant lacrosse club with a "stem" carved into a flattish ellipse... wider, rather than deep... for producing the bullroarer sound. hard to make a bullroarer from a round branch and some bits of string it usually takes around 40 cm x 6 cm x 2cm of hardwood here. Anything less than 2/3 of that and the sound will never escape the valley you find yourself in.

Okay books... read the first 6, and then some... but probably by now firmly in the dated era of airbrushed robots and blacklight posters