31 March 2009

Contest Time!

[Note: This is not an April Fool's Day gag.]

My buddy Farida over at Saints & Spinners came up with the idea to have a great contest and asked if I wanted get in on the action. My immediate answer was "Yeah!"... and then after giving it some thought, my answer was "Heck Yeah!"

The contest is called Unnecessary Children’s Book Sequels That Never Were (a spin-off of her awesome feature: Children's Books That Never Were).

So go over there and CHECK IT OUT and get your creative juices flowing! You have until April 10th. If you come up with one of the three winning entries, I will do my best to illustrate (or photoshop-ustrate) it!

Plus, the winners will get their choice of prizes... an awesome homemade doll/action figure (a Farida original), a Jim Henson dvd, or this random painting of a robot!

29 March 2009

One True Sentence

In A Moveable Feast, Hemingway talks about the life of a writer, saying that "All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence you know."

I wonder if Dr. Charlotte Cowan had this in mind while writing "The Moose With Loose Poops". How else could she construct a sentence as devastatingly honest as:

"A waterfall's coming out of my bottom!"


Yikes! Forget the truth! and forget you, Hemingway!
I don't want the truth! I can't handle the truth!


25 March 2009

Bottom Shelf Quiz

One of the following is an award winning children's book. The other seven are all part of the collected fictions of Jorge Luis Borges. Can you spot the children's book?


a) The Improbable Impostor Tom Castro
b) The Widow Ching - Pirate
c) Man on Pink Corner
d) The Two Kings and the Two Labyrinths
e) Hakim, the Masked Dyer of Merv
f) The Garden of Abdul Gasazi
g) The Night of the Gifts
h) The Approach to Al-Mu'tasim



To see if you're correct, click here.

(Though, if you read the book you'll see that it's very possible that it was stolen from Borges... either that or Borges snuck in through a window at night and whispered the story into the author's sleeping ear.)

24 March 2009

The Story of the Little Mole Who Went In Search of Whodunnit



Authors: Werner Holzarth and Wolf Ehrlbruch

The children's book industry has always niche for books dealing with bodily functions, but if you want some mystery and intrigue mixed in with your scatalogical humor, Holzarth and Ehrlbruch have the book for you.

The story is simple: a mole emerges from his slumber and gets shat on (talk about a case of the mondays). The indignant mole goes on an (understandably) indignant rampage interrogating every being he comes across in an attempt to find the culprit. The entire time, he still has the poop on his head, which makes him look kind of like a character from Grease.

During each interrogation, he asks if the poops belongs to them and each character proves their innocence by (enthusiastically) providing proof by showing their own (much different looking) poop as evidence. And believe you me, the evidence is overwhelming. Not even the crew from CSI could find fault with these steaming samples of innocence.

(Note: The book was rereleased as The Story of the Little Mole Who Knew It Was None of His Business: The Plop Up Edition! that allows the children to join in on the fun... one can only hope that the book stirs your child's respect for scientific inquiry and does not result in a general fondness for playing with poop.)

This story teaches a lesson that is particularly valuable during these harsh times. It seems like every morning we wake up to some new piece of crappy news. The mole provides us with new model of heroism by teaching us not to take this shit sitting down. When the world gives you crap, you find out whodunnit and demand retribution.

Spolier Alert: In an unexpected plot twist, it turns out that the culprit was... Bob Dylan. The Malibu Police Department has joined the Mole in his quest for justice.

Musical Note: I think I might have just found the perfect soundtrack for The Story of the Little Mole Who Knew It Was None of His Business: The Movie. (In High Definition 3D of course.)

So take a second to imagine... the mole wakes up, gets shat on and takes off to the tune of Mississippi John Hurt singing "Nobody's Dirty Business". Can you say Instant Classic?