Believe it Or Not, it's a (Guiness) Record!

Recently, pal Lenore of the NEW YORK SUN put out an APB for insights to this question:
"Why do kids LOVE Ripley's Believe It or Not and The Guiness Book of World Records so much?"
Here's my response:
When I was in the 6th grade, I won a trip to Washington, D.C., and while I was there, picked up my first paperback copy of the GUINNESS WORLD BOOK OF RECORDS. I was hooked. I used to pick up a copy every year. Then I got a life. But anyway, while I was still a fat, nerdy kid, I loved GUINNESS because, I think, there's something hardwired into human nature that makes us love anything that's EXTREME...the fattest guy (I can still see the pix in my book of this 3,000 pound dude and the piano case they had to bury him in) to the world's worst miser (Henrietta Green, turn of the Century, Victoria era type lady who was worth millions but saved soap scraps in a tin and had her son lose his leg because she spent too much time trying to find a free clinic). Besides, kids love things that are goopy and weird and odd (just watch 10 minutes of NICKELODEON, seems every other program involves kids being dumped in green glop) and I think that comes from the fact that kids are particularly intune with what is DIFFERENT. This is why kids who wear glasses or don't wear the "right clothes" get picked on. GUINNESS and RIPLEY's take differences to the extreme so it's a veritable kids' playground.