Review: Pedant "Giggle-Inspiring Words And Images...Yet...Can Intrigue, Provoke, And Possibly Even Mystify"

Book review: The Pedant and the Shuffly

Here is an interesting contradiction: a fully illustrated "picture book," complete in less than 80 pages, many of which have only a handful of lines of text on them, and filled with giggle-inspiring words and images... and yet, at the same time, a book that can intrigue, provoke, and possibly even mystify many well-educated adults! The Pedant and the Shuffly is all that, and I know not what else.

I ordered a used copy of this book online, and it arrived one afternoon as I was preparing to step out to a symphony concert. So I took the book with me, and read most of it during the intermission (which says something about how short it is). I must have gotten some strange looks from the concert-goers around me as I threw my head back and laughed out loud. The book is that funny - and right alongside its sense of humor is a profound sense of oddity and absurdity. In fact, if there were an award for books tiptoeing along the line between whimsical wisdom and outrageous nonsense, this book would be on the short list for it. It attacks reason and logic with an almost polemical fervor, but does so by means of a silly little fairy tale; so one may be tempted to look for signs of a philosophical allegory. Me? I just throw my head back and laugh.

 
Robbie Fischer

mugglenet.com