{"id":3403,"date":"2014-05-13T00:01:20","date_gmt":"2014-05-13T06:01:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/?p=3403"},"modified":"2014-05-30T20:09:36","modified_gmt":"2014-05-31T02:09:36","slug":"a-bit-of-absurdity-before-breakfast","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/?p=3403","title":{"rendered":"A Bit of Absurdity Before Breakfast"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/blaine.org\/jules\/GlorkianWarrior-FINAL-5cutting.jpg\"><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/blaine.org\/jules\/glorkiancover.jpg\" style=\"float:right;\">The beginning of my week has been busier than usual, which means I&#8217;m stragglin&#8217; here, folks, so I&#8217;ll be brief today. <\/p>\n<p>I have some art this morning from <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.americanelf.com\/\">James Kochalka&#8217;s<\/a><\/strong> <em><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.indiebound.org\/book\/9781596439177\">The Glorkian Warrior Delivers a Pizza<\/a><\/strong><\/em> (First Second, March 2014). It features a rather dim-witted, three-eyed pink alien with three teeth; his companion, Super Backpack; and their dangerous journey to deliver a pizza. Throw in a Magic Robot, a Gonk that likes to bonk, a Glorkian supercar, some Glorkian kung fu, some self-directed punching in the face, some space and time disruptions, and lots of banter and bright colors, sure to please lovers of both comics and graphic novels &#8212; especially fans of the absurd. The <em>Kirkus<\/em> review calls it &#8220;vibrantly weird and wonderful,&#8221; and <em>School Library Journal<\/em> calls it &#8220;interestingly subversive.&#8221; Ah, you had me at <em>subversive<\/em>. (And <em>weird<\/em>.)<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve heard\/read discussions lately about the intense, heavy subject matter of many books for children today. For one, I&#8217;m currently reading <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.indiebound.org\/book\/9781452124568\">this<\/a><\/strong> with own daughters. This is a conversation that never seems to go away. Swings like a pendulum, that one. Rest assured, there are no, say, deceased parents, natural disasters, or crippling class issues in <em>The Glorkian Warrior Delivers a Pizza<\/em>. Yes, we need all kinds of books (and, thus far, my girls are riveted by Lamana&#8217;s book), but sometimes you just need the straight-up madcap ones, the ones good for a hearty laugh. <\/p>\n<p>Did I mention my eyes are crossing from fatigue today? That&#8217;s all I&#8217;ve got, and let&#8217;s hope I was mildly to moderately articulate. Here&#8217;s some more art (the first four pages of the book, actually). <\/p>\n<p>Enjoy! <!--more--><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/blaine.org\/jules\/GlorkianWarrior-FINAL-3small.jpg\"><br \/>\n<img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/blaine.org\/jules\/GlorkianWarrior-FINAL-4small.jpg\"><br \/>\n<img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/blaine.org\/jules\/GlorkianWarrior-FINAL-5small.jpg\"><br \/>\n<img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/blaine.org\/jules\/GlorkianWarrior-FINAL-6small.jpg\"><\/p>\n<p><center>* * * * * * *<\/center><\/p>\n<p><em>THE GLORKIAN WARRIOR DELIVERS A PIZZA. Copyright \u00a9 2014 by James Kochalka. Reproduced by permission of the publisher, First Second, New York.<\/em> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The beginning of my week has been busier than usual, which means I&#8217;m stragglin&#8217; here, folks, so I&#8217;ll be brief today. I have some art this morning from James Kochalka&#8217;s The Glorkian Warrior Delivers a Pizza (First Second, March 2014). It features a rather dim-witted, three-eyed pink alien with three teeth; his companion, Super Backpack; [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3403","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-intermediate","category-picture-books"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3403","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3403"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3403\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3403"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3403"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3403"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}