Third time reading this book. HOW have I never taken note of this dedication? 🥺

😍

Strange. My experience with both poetry and picture books is usually that the way I start out is the way I'll finish, but a third of the way in, the words and the art started to speak to me.
I love that poetry adorns a spacecraft sent out in the name of science, to discover more about Europa.
The author's note illuminates the significance of the water themes in the verse and the illustrations.

Per the usual, I'm hampered from a completely fair judgement of any work of poetry by my varying levels of reading comprehension. A collection including many poets means even more variance in my ability to understand, to feel that I fully received the message the poet meant to capture, or that I found something for myself within the poem.
1/?

Traci Brimhall another candidate in this collection, love her way with words enough to look up her other poetry.

Toasty autumn gothic aesthetic wrapped around an Alice-in-Wonderland plot backgrounding teenage drama morphing into multiple therapeutic encounters.
When I say it left me wanting more, I mean that in both senses.
It ended a bit too abruptly, it could have had better pacing, it involved A LOT of young adults emoting/yelling at each other. 1/?

Gorgeous use of words, might have to look up more Dorianne Laux after this collection.

A visual feast, and an excellent introduction.
Within the format of coffee table book, this gets close to being 'The Complete Story' as the subtitle touts, because it covers a lot of ground. Divided into different types of drag, historical and radical, butch and black, comedy, movie, popstar, art, glamour (not in that order), you get a sense of the phenomenon's origins, its struggles and evolutions, its contributions to art, society, 1/?

Yes please!

“...poems are like trees in this way...poems can be a place to stop and remember that we too are living.“ 🌳💚 💌

Stop me if you've heard this one.
New horror premise: badly tipped waitress serial killer. 😑🔪

Would love to be able to hand this book out like a pamphlet.
An incredible resource, full of both vulnerable personal experience and great research, clearly stating the troubled history, the debunking, the way forward for each myth.
I love that each chapter ends with action items and/or reflection questions. I love that Gordon is consistently thinking in nuanced terms of people representing multiple marginal identities. 1/?

A damn low bar for decency, but I'm glad we're leading the pack in some ways. 🇨🇦♥️

“...let us name our own bodies.“

...“all of us have a responsibility to get support in a way that doesn't threaten someone else's dignity or healing.“

“Capitalism is not and will not be a source of justice for any of us.“

Merciless. 💅🏻😈😁

To be fair, I feel like that's Steward's default position. 🙄😏

👀

To absolutely no one's surprise, I loved it! As always this series earns my admiration with the balance of fantastical and down-to-earth, drama and healthy communication, ancient Greek myth and modern urban fantasy, the complex adaptation of mythical figures into people with flaws and traumas, the spectacular art and the healthy dose of humour and warm fuzzies.
1/2

😏

EeeeeeeeEeeeeeeeeeeeEeeeeeeee!!!!🥰
Ahem, pardon the squee. ☺️

Always reassuring when a long running series has a particularly good entry in a later volume. As has happened in the past, this one shone not because it was particularly zany (though the comic quality of this series is to be treasured) but because it managed a multi-episode narrative that was semi-serious in tone, and, as has regularly appeared in the series, commentary on how war affects people as individuals.
1/?

Pfft. 😏

Well that was intense! Possibly the most fantasy-horror leaning of the series. I get why in the acknowledgements, the agent suggested not releasing this one in 2020. If I can extrapolate from there, I also get why a particularly dark story would get written in 2020.
Did not see the first reveal coming, or the second for that matter, but the first one gave me a chill and an aha moment, and the second one was just more darkness.
1/2

Rather weighted comparisons...👀

Reminder for my fellow weekend crafters and makers : “...the creative process does not require a product, and sometimes that process produces a failure.“ It's all part of the process! ❤️

Regular academia is stressful enough, but having demons as your field of study?! 🫣😅

Emphasis on the Bedlam. There is much in this book's intent and its writing to recommend it, but that doesn't stop it from feeling messy overall, in a way that I'm fairly certain the publishers wanted to present as charming, but mostly felt distressing. Gow excels at describing larger than life characters he's encountered as well as wildlife and their natural settings. His rueful reports of various wildlife encounters are hilarious, provided 1/?

LOVE his descriptions and similes.

“...a cattle trailer with hiccups.“ 🫣😆

Damn.

The ART. The WHIMSY! 😍 An exceptional project making an incredibly important statement. A staggering amount of work for a 48 page 'picture' book, but so worth it. Love, love, love. Sincerely hope this becomes a classic for the next generation.

That's right, not drawn, not digitally fashioned, actual artworks made for the book and photographed. 🤯

So grateful for such an important message rendered in such an accessible fashion.
“If people before us could do it, why not me? Why not you?“

Meh. Various teamups, a few quips, various villains I don't know very well or am not very interested in.
Jimmy Olsen as Elastic Man and Batgirl, as well as Green Arrow and Green Lantern were team ups with fun potential, but neither story was long enough.
Here's hoping next installment in this series is as good as previous ones!

Coppertone ad homage and assorted shenanigans. I approve. 😁

Oh, Jimmy, temporary super powers do not make you suave. 🤦🏼‍♂️😏

Oh my- We do NOT call people impaled by Vlad the Impaler KEBABS!! 🫣🫢😆

Never contemplated whether some sheep could swim, does the wool weigh them down or make them buoyant? 🤔 🐑🏊‍♂️

Today's 'scratched my brain just right' sentence. 🎨

Not an easy read, but a worthwhile one. Full credit to Gustafson for consistently tackling tough subjects from human and animal welfare perspectives with compassion and vulnerability.
I knew going in that animals in distress, their illness, injury and death might be touched upon, but in the course of her work Gustafson also encounters people in distress, and reckons with how it can be harder to help her own species, 1/?

Coldest take: It's a BAD system.

Oof, academia flashbacks. 😖

Cheers to Bubbles! 😺🫧 ❤️ The little guy who got the author away from Robby, the bad guy. 😒

“I would be different.“
No, money can't be directly exchanged for happiness, but anybody who's experienced poverty, food or housing insecurity, can tell you: financial stability, leading to other kinds of stability, makes a world of difference, provides the kind of foundation that allows the freer pursuit of happiness.

This book is going to hurt me. 😿

Just a little trash-talking the green lanterns. 💚

There's no way I'm going to do this book justice in attempting to explain why it should be read.
This isn't about the quality of the writing, though it's staggering to recognize a young woman wrote this and conveyed such a strong feeling of being present at the moments of growing up, those early years of childhood innocence and joy, considering everything that came after, the brief moments of pure storytelling relaying family foibles, 1/?

“Dreams are so important in one's life, yet when followed blindly they can lead to the disintegration of one's soul.“ 💔