Crenshaw's Books & Decks

Am I Small? is a book for little children and a good one. It shows that we are what we think we are plus how  other people see us. It shows how other people's view is affected by their perspective, by the point of view on which they stand compared to us. Finally, we are many things at the same time, tiny beings if seen from space, but giants if seen by a ladybug, everyone perspective is acceptable and has some truth to it. These are great lessons to be learned by a child. It is the basis for tolerance, self-acceptance, and non-dogmatism.

Nadja Wichmann's illustrations are lovely, bright and colourful and right to the point, with a hint of fanciness.

I don't know Korean, just started to read, so I cannot comment on the translation. For what other people say it is not good, so I am disappointed!

I bought the book on Kindle, and the digital edition is just fair. It works like some Google apps books I have not like a modern kindle illustrated or comic book. The book directly turns the phone/tablet into landscape settings, and although one can individuate text and some details using double tap on the screen, but some of the writing is so small that one would need the page to be f-u-l-l-y zoomable to move around and see things properly. The book needs to be adjusted to Kindle and/or Comixology properly. Otherwise, the book it is a bit useless in this format. I would recommend buying this on a hard copy.

Yet, this is less than 1$. So let it be. 

The Sculptor tells the story of David Smith, a young sculptor struggling in his personal life and in his professional life as an artist as he is short of money, has no family and, despite its undeniable talent, his work is not being shown or showcased by any important art gallery and this despite his best friend Olly being part of the Art Gallery network.. He is at breaking point when his deceased uncle Harry visits him  and offers him a solution to solve his struggle with Art, and the lovely cheery young actress Meg crosses paths with him.

The book is drawn in a beautiful evocative duotone in indigo blue hues that are not only aesthetically pleasing but also the perfect tone to create the mood that this story needs, a mix of blues song with an underlining and sometimes upfront sadness and personal stress, and also the magic of this indigo child, indigo child understood here as a gifted guy with supernatural abilities and enhanced ways of perception.

McCloud artwork is really that of a Master regarding use of colour, composition, framing and style.

McCloud depiction of New York urban area is absolutely glorious and masterful. He looks at the city as both as an insider and an outsider, because some of the images are really those that anybody visiting the Big Apple for the first time would take with them, the overwhelming but thrilling presence of concrete, steel and skyscrapers. On the other hand, MCloud knows the city and is also able to depict its more rural or parkland areas with freshness and a great bucolic feeling, which is used as an emotional counterpoint to the urban settings, where most of the story happens.

As an insider McCloud shows the New York of the New Yorkers, the ambience of the city, but also the city of the people. Every secondary or tertiary figure and passer-by character depicted in the streets is fully there, even those in the background. Their body language, clothing and attitude tell a story of who they are and we can look at them as individuals that happen to cross the vignette, not as mere accessories to the main character or the image. This is one of the reasons I love reading comics on digital format as the zooming allows us to do that easily, and fully be there within the image, and notice the tiniest scratch or detail.

There are a few surreal  images depicted in the book, many of them truly impacting and beautifully drawn. There is a strong presence of oneiric elements as well. I one of my previous reviews, I mentioned the fact that Magic Realism can be easily mixed up with fantasy and surrealism to describe Latin-American novels as deniable part of the genre. Here we have the contrary case, this is, to me, an undeniable Magic Realism work, even if North-American, and not many people are focusing on that. So, which elements are part of the Magic Realism genre in The Sculptor?
> Fantastical elements (levitation, premonitory dreams, etc.), TICK
> Real-word setting, TICK
> The story is told as is nothing extraordinary was taking place, magical events are accepted in the same plane as those that aren't, TICK
> Use of multiple planes of reality, in this case the oneiric and the awakened state, TICK
> Metafiction, that is, the narrator intentionally exposes themselves as the author of the story, TICK
> Heightened awareness of mystery, TICK
> Social critique, In this case about how the art market works, TICK

On  the other hand, there are important literary connections the reader will make at the beginning, or at least I did, that of the Faustian-like plot being the most important.

I thought that the narrative and characterisation of The Sculptor did not match the finesse of the artwork. Although I liked the overall plot and ending, some characters are a bit clichéd, like Olly and Finn.The character of Meg seemed me a bit non-believable, a good-Samaritan Lolita, but it turns out that the character hides some surprises and is based on MCloud's wife and on their own love story. Ouch! However David and Harry's characters are roundly profiled and created.

The beginning of the book was exhilarating, witty and interesting, then turned into a boring immature love story to gain momentum again and end brilliantly.  The book mixes dialogues that deal with what Art is and is not, how Art is produced, how Art is sold and marketed and what makes a successful artist. On the other hand we see how life and Art mix in intricate ways, how the artist's life and the artist' art feed each other, and how most talented artists would not make it.

The ending was genuine and the one that I wanted to see. Some rules can't be broken ever, some thing simple are that way, as the character personifying Death would say. And changing the end to please readers would have been an artistic betrayal to the author's own vision and the inner logic of the story.

+ Some final consonants are mute but those or when this occurred is not mentioned. 

+ The pronunciation of some letters is inaccurate or incomplete.
+ This is a bait to get you to their online paid program to learn Korean.

You can find better stuff for free online,  for example

http://seemile.com

http://www.korean-course.com/index.en.php?page=alphabet01

I MISSED
I would have loved hearing the pronunciation of the words in Korean  by natives. Which would be really easy to do if the Kindle book had a link that got you online to a place where these words are pronounced or to a downloadable file. Other similar books on Korean have this feature.

Overall, a very cute useful book, that does what it promises, get you to recognise the hangeul alphabet and to read basic words. There are basic courses online, for free, with videos, done by Koreans, so that is always better. However, I found the association technique really helpful and that is the main virtue of this booklet.

Descender vol. 2, like the first instalment of this galactic saga, is a graphic novel with amazing visuals and an entertaining story. It is like one of those comfort-foods that you want to eat over and over again because, although it is not gourmet, original or new it tastes good, warms your belly and makes you feel good.

I'm always mesmerised by Nguyen watercolour and drawing mastery and artistry. I love his use of colour and the way he creates lights an shadows using positive/background space. I love how good he is a creating landscapes and characters that can be painted with great detail or just sketched and deconstructed but, visually, still fully there. That is the case of his long distance images and background crowd images; the more you look at them the more they look like blotches of colour, but they are masterly shaped to create the illusion of a full image. Like in Descender 1, Descender 2 has a cohesive colour palette, with colours and hues that are consistently used, some of them are there to depict the environment where the action is happening, but there is a preference for different hues of white, blue, pink and dark greys, with other bright colours popping up secondarily, like red and orange. I don't know if it is a coincidence, but a dark hue of pink is always in the image when Tim-21 experiences special moments in the story. Descender 2  story has more action than  Descender 1 so Nguyen plays more with the composition and layout of the vignettes to create dynamism and tension. Like in the previous volume, memories from the past are drawn in sepia tones with a superposition of scenes or developed scenes that have no vignettes; that is the way the mind and memory work -- as an amalgamation of images, words and feelings that are never square or structured. If you are into the Arts you will linger on each page, slowly sipping the watercolour work and Nguyen's artwork.

Once again the typography used in the book is very dynamic with different fonts being used to differentiate noise and ambience sounds, machine speech, robot speech, human speech, static signing, informative narration text and so on. This enhances the reading and makes the text more engaging and enjoyable.

As I mentioned for Descender 1, I love Lemire but I don't think Descender is his best work. Descender 2's narrative, character's depiction and dialogues  are still science-fiction déjà vu and cliches. Some characters are crowding the pages without contributing to anything and wasting a time and space that could be devoted to a more in-depth depiction and analysis of the main characters. Descender 2 is better at doing so than Descender 1, though, as there is a bit of more digging into who the characters are, albeit superficial and not deep enough to create round unique characters that don't remind you of anything you haven't seen or read before. Some of the characters that were a bit annoying, distracting and unnecessary in volume 1 are toned down and almost gone in volume 2, like Driller the Killer. However, we see others occupy that same annoying spot, like the funny-ugly predictable Blugger in volume 2.  Is he necessary to the story? Does he contribute to the story? To me, he doesn't, at least so far. The same happens with some of the dialogues, which are uninspired and a bit blah, and heard gazillion times in any other comic on planet earth. I found a bit ridiculous calling Effie the Queen in Between, jeez, I would have expected a bit of more creativity, a one word name that means just that...  

On the sunny side of things, the story seems to follow places that, a priori, we are lead to think that it would not happen. Like Andy popping up. We, or at least I, feared that Tim-21 quest would be met with disappointment, but Andy pops up in this volume and there is a great joy and intrigue. Andy is perhaps the most developed character in the story so far and I am intrigued about his motives. We get to meet some of the leading robots known as the harvesters, enter their mechanic moon, and get to know who they are, what they want and what they believe in. I enjoyed the mix of Huxley meets New Age beliefs that the leading robots have; there is a bit of gold buried there and I hope we dig it out in the next volume.  Although there aren't oneiric images in this volume, some of them are oneiric-like, especially those related to the fall into Planet Phages, and very lovely.  Finally, the story touches many interesting important themes: self-identity, individuality, race, alterity, ethical behaviour, what life is, what being human means, and what makes us connect. The more I read Descender, the more I see it as a quest for the ideal brotherly love and for connection, whatever form this might take and whomever is the being one connects with. The worlds in the Descender galaxy are multifaceted and interesting despite the flaws of the story.

The ending of this volume, although not a cliffhanger, gets me interested, and, once again, I will be buying the next volume hoping that the story follows unexpected paths, that we get some u-turns and surprises and that some characters have more depth, and being sure that Nguyen's artwork will keep me going no matter what.   

I read this book it on Comixology and the digital copy is fantastic. It makes you appreciate all the details of the artwork, and even the ruggedness and pores of the paper used for the paintings. One gets the impression of having the original in front of the eyes. I love that touchability of the images.

Fascinating, entertaining, funny and intriguing, "Them" is a companion to the doco series The Secret Rulers of the World, which revolves around the the Bilderberg Group's nature, aims, members, activities and secret meetings. "Them" is also a portrait of extremists of all sorts and conspiracy-theory believers done by getting to know these people directly and personally via Ronson. "Them" is, above all, an exposé of how nonsensical beliefs morph and adjust in the mind of people and groups whose values and belief systems are, a priori, totally contrary, and on how delusion can create a sort of matrix that feels very real to those people who plug into it. Finally, this book is, at a more personal level, an exploration of the meaning of being a Jew, of who the Jews, the Jewish and the Zionists are according to people who are not Jews done by Ronson, a lapse Jew.

"Them" surprises, like many other Ronson's books, because presents the extremists from a very human point of view, with detachment and compassion at the same time. They are normal people after all, with families, beliefs, and a heart, people who live very normal lives, even though part of their normality is also extremism. They believe that we all, the others, are the real extremists and not them, and they are not happy to be called or considered extremists. As Ronson states, "I thought that perhaps an interesting way to look at our world would be to move into theirs and stand alongside them while they glared back at us."

Who are these persons? They are neo-nazis, anti-Jews, anti-Catholics, anti-blacks, anti-Christians. All these people share the conviction that power elites, the Bielderberg Group, orchestrated the 11/9 attacks, those in the World Trade Centre were part of the New World Order, "an internationalist Western conspiracy conducted by a tiny, secretive elite, whose ultimate aim is to destroy all opposition, implement a planetary takeover, and establish themselves as a World Government."

The people profiled in the book are:
1/ Omar Bakri Mohammed, the so-called Osama Bin Laden's man in the UK, a Muslim extremist who lived in UK from welfare, profited from free speech to preach Holy War on Britain, and was part of an active movement to support Islamic Extremism and Sharia Law anywhere, the UK included.

2/ Rachel Weaver's parents (Randy and Vicky), left the world and retired to an isolated cabin in a mountain area in Montana, because they believed that the world was being secretly ruled by a group of Zionist international bankers, "global elitists who wanted to establish a genocidal New World Order and implant microchips bearing the mark of Satan into everyone’s forehead."

3/ Jack McLamb lives and the small Christian community called Doves of the Valley. He is an ex-policeman, drummed out of the force after he created an organization called Police Against The New World Order.

4/ Big Jim Tucker works for an underground paper called the Spotlight, which supports neo-nazi  views and is obsessed with the activities of the Bilderberg group.

5/ David Icke, an ex-footballer turned sports commentator turned spiritual guru, who believes that the World Rulers are in fact body snatches of the Annunaki Lizards from the lower fourth dimension, whose aim is to dominate the world.

6/ Thom Robb, the Grand Wizard of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, lives with his family and an informal army of white supremacists in the Ozark Mountains, wants to create an independent state oblivious to the moral decadence of the USA. He believes that Hollywood is a crucial part of a global Zionist conspiracy and moral decadence.

7/ The movie director Tony Kaye halfway through the  editing of his début film, American History X. 

8/ Jeff Berry, the Imperial Wizard of the American Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, one of Thom Robb’s chief rivals, a man famed for saying ‘nigger’ freely on television.

9/ The Ku Klux Klan historian Richard Bondira, who sells Klan merchandise on the Internet and advertises himself as the keeper of a Klan museum.

10/ The Aryan Nations group in Idaho.

11/ Dr Ian Paisley, the Northern Irish Protestant nationalist and independent evangelical pastor, obsessed anti-Catholic and anti-Papist. 

12/ Mary Moore, a local anti-Bohemian Grove activist.


Ronson does a great job at creating a profile of what the Bilderberg Group is according to the extremists, to then go directly to the very members of the group, one of the founders included, and provide their version of the group's reality.

So, who are the Bilderberg group according to the extremists?
> They rule the world from a secret room.
> Every year, in May or June, this global elite go to a secret summer camp north of San Francisco called Bohemian Grove, where they get together and do all types of debauchery, sexual perversion and the same people who belong to the Bilderberg Group belong to it. They’re witches and warlocks.
> They start the wars, and cause famines and chaos.
> They control the governments, the presidents, the candidates of the major parties and are setting up the one world order.
> We haven't heard of them because they own and control the Media.
> They have been ruling the world in secret since 1954, when Joseph Retinger, a Polish immigrant, created the BG, which was called this way because their first meeting took place in the Bilderberg Hotel in Holland.
> They are Zionist Jews or just Jews.
> They are Machiavellian Papists according to others.
> They meet annually in Bohemian Grove, in the logging town of Occidental, where they perform  ceremony called the owl-burning ceremony or cremation of care, with depraved satanic pagan  ceremonies.

Who are the BG according to the BG Members?
Ronson contacted dozens of Bilderberg members, who ignored him between 1999 ad 2000 when Denis Healey one of the founder members of the BG contacted Ronson. Thanks to this conversations we know how the BG operates, as described at length in chapter 12 How Things are Done. It is important to remark that 
> they rotundly deny that they  secretly rule the world, but Ronson's interviewees admit that International politics and affairs had been influenced by these sessions now and then.
> They are against Islamic Fundamentalism and other extremisms because they go against democracy.
> They don't consider themselves a secret group but a private group as they speak freely of anything and don't want journalists middling in and attacking something they don't know anything about.

I have never seen the documentaries, but the book stands alone well. "Them" is well-written, very well structured and "staged", and most of it has just a great cinematic feeling that makes the reading truly enjoyable. No wonder that the rights of the book were purchased to turn it into a movie. It feels like a movie but, sadly, all of what is mentioned in the book is real. Ronson does a great job at presenting the subject  in a very entertaining way, with very humorous real-life episodes, mixed with serious reflection and research (even adventure) journalism.

Like in other of his books, Ronson has the great virtue of keeping his English Phlegm burning even when people are talking badly about the Jews, and at keeping his Jewish origin as hidden as possible, or perhaps not openly displayed, and at getting the trust of people who, then, he exposes without any regret. Ronson wants to present to us who the extremists are and what they stand for. That is great. What I find somewhat unethical is his apparently willingness to make those same people believe that he is a sort of unbiased analyst, even a friend, when he is basically a journo writing a story.

I think the book can be easily used to study the concept of Alterity.

I found the chapter on Romania's Ceauceuscu very entertaining but way off subject despite the fact that Ronson says that "I had come to Romania because I imagined that an auction of Ceauescu’s belongings was a fitting microcosm of what I believed went on inside Bilderberg meetings." As a reader, I don't agree.

The story of Randy's Weaver is very sad and depressing, and I found great that Ronson delved into the deep trying to bring up to the public the version of the killing of the family in the family cabin.

The chapters Clearing of the Forest and The Secret Rulers of the World are utterly funny, in a weird sense, hilarious at times. Ronson describes himself, perhaps just for narrative purposes, as the naive Jon who gets into weird things by accident.Yet, he is able to make and answer important questions and to provide his honest personal view on different matters. I found that he is perhaps more honest with the reader than with the people he follows and interviews in this book, but this is just my impression.

 NOTES
> Shorter or Modified versions of some of the chapters appeared published elsewhere before publication in their final form in this book.
> The profiling and research on some of the extremists mentioned in the book began in 1995 and the book was first published in 2001,  and the first electronic edition in 2010. In that regard, many of the events mentioned in the book are no longer current and many of them have have had U-turns that aren't mentioned in the book. However, the book reads well and is still valid as an exploration of extremism and extremists. It would have been great adding an addenda mentioning some of those events, an update of what has happened to those characters since the book was written, something really easy to do in an electronic edition.

TYPOS
+ location 520 ‘Oh, give it tome!’
+ loc 2395 wasa mistake.
+ loc 2546 ‘who might want tomarry me?’
+  loc. 3486 to see a filmwhich may
+ All references to Ceauescu have the s replaced with the proper Romanian symbol, but they appear oversized and somewhat distorted in my phablet and a bit odd in my Kindle for PC.

A NOTE ON THE COVER
Ronson's book cover for the kindle edition is utterly cool, like most of his other Kindle editions. Great design and colouring and very humorous with Ronson's glasses and silhouette always un view. So 'catchy'! Kudos to the designer.

A great reading overall.

I love Dr Seuss' books. I think they are not only good for children, but also for adults. They all teach important lessons, values, ethical behaviour, they are lay and universal, and they always ground me. Dr Seuss' books are about what life should be. Life is crazy (his crazy texts, unusual stories, and outrageous colours are just that), but it not just about what you see, it is about how you relate to people, how you see and relate to the world, and how you feel. 

"And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street" is a book about the beauty of the ordinary and of savouring the small things in life. It is also a book about the importance of imagination and how imagination works. The story also captures how fables and legends were born centuries ago, how small things were put together to be turned into a unreal fantasy.

This story has aged well with regards to some points but not others, but it is more relevant than ever for modern kids. Originally written in 1937, it is obvious in 2016 that most small children in developed countries don't walk alone to/back school, not even with pals, they are driven to/from school by their  parents or accompanied by caretakers in school buses. Of course, there are countries where children walk Kms to go to school, so perhaps for those the story is as fresh as it was when it was written. On the other hand, the role of imagination in the education of children isn't as prominent  as it was 30-50 years ago -- nowadays there is an ubiquity of visual imagined worlds presented to kids  already masticated in TV programs and movies, too many kids aren't told or read stories before bed,  and too many are parked in front of TVs, tablets and smartphones numbing their imagination when they should be using it the most. 

Julio's Day is actually a book about Julio's (family) Life. A charming BW time travel from the coming out of nothingness of Julio Reyes in 1900 to his passing into nothingness in the year 2000. Although set in America's South, most of the characters are Mexican or from Mexican origin and culture. This is a charming trip for the reader, with so many things happening in the life of Julio's family. There is love and hatred, dark secrets, innocence, innocence lost, gay repressed sex and explicit sex, treason, murder, madness, hilarious bizarre moments, joy and sadness. The only chronological anchors are the references to the wars that spanned the 20th century, changes in clothing and some social references that are easily associated with specific decades. There is also a visual anchoring in the depiction of the town's progressive industrialisation.

I know that the author and the book have been defined as within the Magic Realism genre. To me, there is little or nothing of Magic Realism in this book. I think MR is used too often to describe works that have some oddity about them and people cannot categorise. In this book there are episodes of mental alienation, trippy, but that is it. To me, this book connects more with Latin-American family-saga telenovelas than with anything else.  Hernández does a great job at infusing this family saga with enough charm, realism, and lack of 'Manichaeism' to get the story away of extreme non-believable characters. The story feels organic, alive, as it was real.  The characters feel also real. In fact, I have known people who were like those in this book. On the other hand the characters are just schetched because there are many and the period covered isis very  long.

One of the main elements of Mexican culture (and Hispanic/Spanish) culture is how death is understood, perceived and faced. This is especially valid for Mexicans in the period Hernández describes. However, it connects with stories and attitudes that were common in rural areas during my childhood even though I am not Mexican. There is a familiarity with death, a presence of death and of the dead in life, because death is part of life, not in a creepy morbid horror way, you show r-e-s-p-e-c-t- to death because it is another passage rite. That awareness of death also keeps people more grounded in life and there is less fear, less avoidance. This is perfectly captured in this book. I love the presence of the hill with the tombstone crosses, and how some of the death of the characters is depicted. 

This is a male dominated story with strong female characters performing traditional roles. This is how it was in rural areas in many parts of the world decades ago, and I think Hernández captures this with veracity. In this case, Renata summarises well the role that some women played, and the sort of life that those women had in that historical context. Just one example. Renata is strong and caring, but she often says "women need of no reasons", which sounds a bit like women are irrational. In that context, though, women used to say this sort of thing because they had proof of their reasons, or inner knowing, or they just knew, but didn't want to speak about it. Araceli's character is perhaps the most interesting in the whole book. I would have  loved that Hernández developed a bit more her character; she appears as a nun-ish good samaritan, but there much more juice about her that was not explored.

I found the male characters interesting and varied enough to make the story entertaining. Julio's character seems, in comparison, a secondary one  not the main one. He is always there, a sweet gentle man, mostly in the background. This has a narrative purpose, of course. There are very few scenes in which we seem him happy, and they always revolve around a person. We see him feeling, alive, in just one scene close to the end of the book. I cried at the end, out of sadness for the character, and because I know men like him in real life: people who live life without the courage of being true to who they are, lead a pleasant empty life that does not satisfy them inside, aim to the unattainable probably because it is a fantasy that  doesn't require of them doing something to create their life experience.  Living is not just existing. In that regard, Julio's Dayim shows just that. Julio has an existence of 100 years but he really lived for one day. A microperiod of real life between two big empty holes of nothingness separated by 100 years.  I liked the quote by Samuel Becket that Evenson's chose for his brief introduction: "one day we were born, one day we shall die, the same day, the same second, is that not enough for you?". Life is like a fleeting moment is another way of putting it.   

I have a mix of feelings about Hernández's visual style. I love his shadow silhouetted landscapes, and his long distance scenes, theyare superb: beautifully composed, lyric, and with enough pathos to be another character in the story. I love some of the facial expressions in children, and some shocking scenes with the WW1-veteran neighbour. Although I enjoyed the vignettes, I found some of the pages and vignettes too crowded and the depiction of some characters too "chunky".  

This is not a book for children.

HTBH is an anthology of comic strips and stories published by Davis in different publications, drawn both in colour and black and white.  

How to be Happy sounds like the title of a motivational or self-help book but. as the author herself reveals in the foreword, this book is not a book on how to be happy. The cover certainly helps to convey the same idea.  Despite the stories being quite different in style an tone, the book has a few main themes. Most of the stories are very introspective, and revolve about people looking inside to get their suppressed emotions out, people struggling to feel, numbed people, depressed people, over-emotional people. One of the stories in the book provides us with what I think would have been a great title for the book: "No tears, no sorry. No sorry no joy". Also "Let the sorry out. Let the joy in". Those titles are way closer to what the stories in this anthology are  about. I think giving the book a title closer to what the vignettes are about would have been more honest, even if less marketable-savy.


Davis is an amazing versatile visual artist. The collection of strips in the book showcases her talent. Her images go from the very simple linear and sketchy, to the very painterly and detailed paintings, from the classic naturalistic drawings to the vectorial compositions, from the ezine-like comic strips to the surreal, from the slice of life to science fiction. Some of her stories transport us to Sendak-ish magic worlds that one would like to explore in long books. She is good with black and white, and even better when she uses colours and  sepias. Her colours are glorious.    

From a narrative point of view, Davis is able to create stories that focus on the inner world of her characters: their feelings, emotions and thoughts, their approach to life, the way they 'see' and 'feel' the world. Her narrative is concise, precise and poignant, introspective, but also expressive and full of humour. Some of the texts in the book are brilliant despite their brevity. I especially like the "Darling, I've realised I don't love you", "I used to be so unhappy" and the statue of the best self, but there are a few brilliant mini-texts in this book, some of them really philosophical and to ponder way after you finish the book.

I hated the story of the skinning of a fox, revolting to me, and the comic strips of the trip from Georgia to Los Angeles  and Mr Strong are  OK. 

This book was included in several lists of best graphic books of the 2015 I've come across. I think the inclusion is well deserved as this book showcases Davis' brilliance as both visual artist and story teller. Among other distinctions, the book has received: NPR's and Publishers Weekly's Best Books of 2014; Shortlist, Slate's 2014 Cartoonist Studio Prize for Best Print Comic of the Year and 2015 Ignatz Award Winner: Outstanding Anthology or Collection.

I found the price for the Kindle/Comixology edition a bit too much, because this digital edition does not require of the use of paper, ink or manufacture. Besides, these stories were previously published pieces not new for the book. Finally, I have to pay for the downloading of the bulky file to my Internet provider. I love that artists make a living out of their talent, but digital books like this should be sold at a fairer price.    

Wicked Chicken Queen is an example of how 25 pages of simple imagery and very mindful text can create an epic story that will resonate with many people, and keep readers in wonder afterwards. You might need to re-read the book several times to get it. And the book offers a few readings or interpretations, something I always love.

I love Alden visual style made of sinuous lines that move elegantly, in a continuum, converging, diverging and intersecting in a whimsical dance, creating a rich and colourful world and characters out of simple-not-so-simple black and white drawings. There is grace, fluidity, and freshness in Alden's Universe, as if the book was  for children. His book touches, though, on subjects that aren't childish or simple. There are also hints of humour in the book, and a sprinkle of provocation. If you take the time to look at the drawings properly, you will find delightful mini-scenes.

What will captivate you will not only be the art in this tale, but the overall story. I have read a few reviews saying that the story didn't need of text, well, I think it quite differently. I would have loved this a silent book, that is for sure, but in this case the text just takes it to the next level, and allows the reader to explore a world of treasures that are hidden right in front of their nose.

This is a little-grand modern fable for the young and the old that will leave you  in awe, in ohhhhh I would say, even though you might get the ohhhhh, as I did, minutes after I had finished the book.