Agee Books

I"ve made a career out of entertaining families with my quirky show. This book captures my highest goal - to mesmerize adults and kids at the same time. I think our sons loved it . I know that they asked for it again and again. Was this because of the spare text , hilarious drawings, or the surprising plot twists , each with their own perfect logic? Maybe they just could feel my joy in reading it, and so I uncontrollably pushed it on them!! His illustrations show remarkable range, and Milo shows so many feelings withtout ever even illustrating his mouth. After you get this book, get his book 'Incredible' !

There are really cool illustrations to go along with the story of a magician in danger of being fired since he can't do the famous rabbit trick, who meets a bear who can jump into hats. My nephews and nieces loved this one.

This book tells the story of Milo, a totally inept magician, who is pressured to improve his performances or lose his job. He goes off to the forest in search of a rabbit to put in his hat. Of course, he is unsuccessful at finding a rabbit, but instead finds a very generous and helpful bear. The dedicated bear proceeds to help Milo improve his act.

There is extremely little to cause anxiety in this book, although some children may express a little concern at the original appearance of the bear. However, Milo learns to trust others, and the bear does some wonderful good deeds to help a complete stranger. The book is printed in a sans serif font, that would be easy for beginning readers to deal with. It contains about 650 words.

A wonderful tale about a down-on-his-luck magician who meets an amazing bear. The story is delightful and funny-even for parents. We love the illustrations, the bears telling eyes, the magician's expressions. We have shared this book with many friends.

This book is funny, sweet, creative, surprising, entertaining...it has it all.

James Agee was a great writer (his book about the Dust Bowl is a classic). He continued to be a brilliant writer in his film reviews and his scripts. Thank you, Modern Library, for returning these collections of writing to us. They are wonderful to read and they make you think!

James Agee wrote film criticism in America at a time when the American film industry hardly deserved his attention. His celebrations of silent film comedy, of Preston Sturges, of John Huston [for whom he later wrote the script for The African Queen], and of the handful of worthy foreign films that he managed to see are what make this volume worth reading. Besides Agee's beautiful prose and above all his compassion. Interestingly, Agee was a fan of Frank Capra's comedies (It Happened One Night) and bemoaned the director's decent into serious social films (Mr Smith Goes To Washington, Meet John Doe). His negative review of It's a Wonderful Life, which has never been in print since it appeared in 1946, reveals the extent to which Agee was perhaps too far ahead of his time, and even of ours.

Ever wonder what causes a movie reviewer to *become* a movie reviewer? When I was a ten-year-old kid just getting into classic movie comedies, I went to the library and checked out the book AGEE ON FILM solely because it had references to Charlie Chaplin and W.C. Fields. Thus was my introduction to high-quality film criticism.

James Agee made his reputation writing sterling movie reviews for Time and The Nation magazines in the 1940's. Among other glories, he wrote a much-heralded essay titled "Comedy's Greatest Era" that helped to bring silent-comedy icons (most notably Harry Langdon) out of mothballs and caused them to be re-viewed and discussed seriously among film historians. He later went on to work on the screenplays of a couple of gems titled The African Queen and Night of the Hunter.

Unfortunately, many people who regard the critics Pauline Kael and Stanley Kauffmann have either forgotten Agee's work entirely or have assigned his own work to mothballs. But among the faithful are film director Martin Scorsese, who serves as editor of the "Modern Library: The Movies" series of film books. The series has recently reissued the AGEE ON FILM book, and re-reading Agee's work (or reading it for the first time, if you're lucky enough) proves that film criticism can make for reading material as compelling as any fictional novel.

Agee passes the acid test for any film critic: Even if you don't agree with him, his writing is so lively that you can't help enjoying it. His work ranges from three separate columns (three weeks' worth, in print terms) to Chaplin's much-maligned (at the time) MONSIEUR VERDOUX, to the most concise, funniest review ever: Reviewing a musical potboiler titled YOU WERE MEANT FOR ME, Agee replied in four simple words, "That's what *you* think."

If you want to see what high-caliber movie criticism meant in the pre-Siskel & Ebert days, engross yourself in this sprawling book. It'll make you appreciate the decades before every newspaper, newsletter, and Internet site had its own minor-league deconstructionist of Hollywood blockbusters.

James Agee was short for this world, having died in his mid 40s. In that span of time he wrote a famous book, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, and a couple of classic screenplays, AFRICAN QUEEN and NIGHT OF THE HUNTER. This collection of magazine film reviews and essays is in many ways the leftover part of his work, and yet it feels like enough to make a reputation on. His reviews span just one decade, the 1940s. Many of them tackle foreign films that may be unavailable for all I know.

Interesting to me is that he spends three weeks discussing Chaplin's MONSIEUR VERDOUX, which is a most unusual movie and mostly forgotten today. This might be because he saw it as his only chance to write a poignant piece on the greatest living film artist, or it may be because he identified with the plight of mankind theme that Chaplin was reaching for. You can pick another reason, yourself, but it was a bold decision, because most critics panned the film (according to him) and most readers probably couldn't even see the movie in their small towns. It was as if he knew he would be writing for posterity. Like all critics, he cultivated his darlings. He saw much in the work of John Huston and was very skillful in his sizing up of TREASURE OF THE SIERRA MADRE. I was impressed that he predicted the all-time classic nature of the film, but also understood the studio system gimmicks that took away from the genius.

You don't have to be literary minded like W. H. Auden to enjoy this book. You'll like it, if you like movies.

I still have my first edition copy of Agee on Film.

A production on the stage is seen once and then is gone forever. Curiously, despite the fact that a film can be viewed repeatedly, once upon a time revivals were rare, and most audiences saw a film once, talked about it, then forgot about it.

Even the film studios only half-heartedly treated their products as permanent, allowing many of them to deteriorate irretrievably and others nearly so (eventually giving rise to an entire industry devoted to film restoration).

Films were given a new life with the advent of television. Growing up on old movies on the tube in the 1950s, I found that repeated viewing of the same film could be a rich experience, and nothing enhanced this experience more than the appearance in the early 1960s of Agee on Film.

Agee took film seriously as a cultural experience, a molder of public opinion, a tool that might be useful or dangerous. Just how much he differs from mainstream reviewers who regarded the movies primarily as entertainment can be seen in the two different sets of reviews in this book.

His reviews in the liberal The Nation are extended analyses of the films and the sensibilities of the filmmakers, withering critiques of the limitations of the studio system, and manifestos on how good films could have been made better. Agee interpolates in his reviews his opinions about everything: The War (WWII, of course), politics, race, education, religion, psychology, philosophy ... the list goes on.

In contrast, his reviews for Time, constrained by that magazine's conservatism, are truncated and absent the depth and bite that distinguishes Agee from all other critics. His beautiful use of language keeps him afloat, but were it not for The Nation, I doubt Agee would have the reputation of Greatest Film Critic of All Time.

Agee on Film was originally in two volumes. The first was the current book. The second was a collection of Agee's own screenplays, including the classic The Night of the Hunter; Noa Noa, a fascinating teleplay about Gaugin (very different from Maughams' The Moon and Sixpence); and his magnificent adaptation of the The African Queen. Thus, he was able, unlike most critics, and with admirable results, to put his pen where his critique was.

James Agee almost single-handedly popularized the appreciation of film as an art form. The writing in this book is how he did it.

Both the text and drawings of this book will have you in stitches, and keep you wondering. While seemingly simplistic, the small phrases like "FLEX, ELF" accompanied by a drawing of a dwarf desperately trying to muster up to large cloned muscle men are absolutely hilarious. If you love words, language, and a sharp wit, this is the book for you. Truly one you will want to return to again.

Both the text and drawings of this book will have you in stitches, and keep you wondering. While seemingly simplistic, the small phrases like "FLEX, ELF" accompanied by a drawing of a dwarf desperately trying to muster up to large cloned muscle men are absolutely hilarious. If you love words, language, and a sharp wit, this is the book for you. Truly one you will want to return to again.

this book is found in one of my local libraries and it helps me to get out of my adult depressions. I'm especially enamored of the guy in the Chinese Restaurant who's asked by the waiter, "Wonton?" and his reply is "Not now!"

Both the text and drawings of this book will have you in stitches, and keep you wondering. While seemingly simplistic, the small phrases like "FLEX, ELF" accompanied by a drawing of a dwarf desperately trying to muster up to large cloned muscle men are absolutely hilarious. If you love words, language, and a sharp wit, this is the book for you. Truly one you will want to return to again.

Palindromes. Hard to write, fun to read, especially in the expert hands of Jon Agee.

A palindrome is a word or phrase that is spelled the same way forwards or backwards, as in "Go hang a salami! I'm a lasagna hog!", which has to be one of the longest and most complicated palindromes in existence.

Mr. Agee has collected some fantastically fun and funny palindromes in this collection illustrated by the author. There is a picture of a lion on a sunny beach with a bottle of "lion oil" behind him. Winnie the Pooh is doing the hula hoop (it's "Pooh's hoop", of course!!). My personal favorite (and an exceptionally long palindrome) is of an inventor in a room full of switches, gadgets and wires. In the middle of the room sits a tiny box playing music. He exclaims, arms out, "I madam, I made a radio! So I dared! Am I mad, am I?!" Go ahead, spell it backwards...

In a world where good English skills are swiftly becoming a rarity and few folk seem interested in grammar or word games, Mr. Agee's book is a breath of fresh air. At times, the illustrations fit the palindromes so perfectly that you almost forget that these are special sentences that are quite difficult to create, and the read more like a comic strip.

Kudos to Mr. Agee for not only playing about with words to create Palindromes, but for publishing some for those struggling folk (like myself) who can't seem to come up with any of our own!! Readers may also want to check out his other book, "So Many Dynamos!"

Joel Agee's Twelve Years: An American Boyhood in East Germany offers a hilarious and universal account of the passage from boyhood to manhood. Enjoying this book does not require an interest in its unique setting. Never mind that the entire work occurs between 1948 and 1960 in the Stalinist dictatorship of the German (un)Democratic Republic; or that the author's Jewish American mother is living with her children and second husband in the anti-fascist Soviet Satellite of the only recently vanquished Third Reich; or that the author's biological father is Pulitzer Prize-winning writer, James Agee; or that his stepfather is an East German writer whose socialist themes become less relevant the more the dictatorship he lives in takes hold. Joel Agee so powerfully conveys the challenging and exciting passage of a male from age eight to twenty, that distinctions of place, time, name, and circumstance meld into a broader truth.

By page thirteen, the book's ever more ironic and outrageously funny form takes shape -- the fibs to Mom, friendship mischief, the struggle to fit in with peer groups, and the stirrings of sexual awakening that should have long ago made this work a classic.

I too have been urged by friends to write a book about my youth. In 1981, at the age of 18, I decided to reunite with my father and immigrated from the USA to the DDR. I was later expelled in 1986 for political reasons and lived elsewhere in Europe until my return in 1991 following the Fall of The Berlin Wall. I remained there until April of 2000 at which time I returned to the USA.
This book brought back some memories despite the difference in time. (The Author went to the DDR in 1948 at the age of 8. I went to the DDR in 1981 at the age of 18) I had no idea that there had been any other Americans that shared an even remotely similar story and Joel Agee does a great job of telling his story with far more emotion and prose than I ever could.
The book is a wonderful insight into life in a country that no longer exists...from the view point of an American child/young adult. I especially recommend it to anyone who has grown-up or lived in a country where they felt they did not belong. In my opinion, Agee entered the DDR in its infancy and left just as its darkest period began. I entered The DDR at the height of the Reagan Era and witnessed its collapse from within. Two historic phases. I only wish that both of us could have witnessed more.

"Twelve Years: An American Boyhood in East Germany" is a fascinating memoir. Eight-year-old Joel Agee was brought by his mother and stepfather to the Soviet zone of Germany (what would become East Germany) in 1948 and lived there for the next 12 years. As Agee's stepfather, Bodo Uhse, was a prominent Communist, Agee had the best that East Germany could offer: a villa with servants, summers at the Baltic Sea, and numerous opportunities to recover from his dismal performance at school. Agee does provide an insight as to how the Communist intelligentsia in that country thought -- their explanations for the closed border, their view of the Stalinist (and Soviet-bloc) purges in the early 50s, and their conflicting views of Khruschev's revelations. This memoir is also a coming-of-age story, filled with teenage angst and sexual frustration. What distinguishes this from many other memoirs is that it is exceptionally well-written. Although Agee was never able to get his bearings in the East German school system (or was, as we would say today, a "slacker") his descriptions are almost poetic. Well worth reading.

I read Joel Agee's book "Twelve Years. An American Boyhood in East Germany" in German and in English and tried very hard to get a used copy of his first american edition - without any success. Finally, he is back again with a new edition, and allthough my english is not as good as it should be, I just want to write down some words abaout this book. For me who always lived in Western Germany it is one of the most interesting books about the communist part of Germany, the GDR (in german it's DDR). It was not meant to be a political book, but it has become one anyhow. The reader is not only enabled to follow a very private story of growing up as a boy (including all the problems most man - since they have been boys - know and prefer not to talk about it), but to understand how culture and everyday life had been transformed by the communist ideology in a way that could be critizised only by children: some simply laughed about it and learned, that even only to laugh could have negative consequences. And getting some idea of how adults did discuss the political penetration of everyday life makes you feel glad to be grown up in a non communist state - but still you can understand that this adults they had their living like others had, and that they were fathers and mothers having everyday problems like others had. This book indeed touched and pleased me. It is a marvellous written autobiographical kind of literature. If you'll read it, it will take a part of your heart and your intellect to. You'll have to love it.

I'm delighted to see that Joel Agee's memoir is now available again, and I look forward, with pleasure, to re-reading it. In beautiful prose, Agee not only reveals the pains and pleasures of his growing up (it could be anywhere), but gives us a portrait, from an unusual angle, of life in the newly formed German Democratic Republic, i.e.,communist East Germany, during the period 1948-1960. The historian will find the book of particular interest, but so will anyone else who enjoys entering the unsual world of a sensitive young man with a terrific eye for detail, and who is frank about his inner life.

Agee returned to the U.S. just as the amazing 60s were about to roll their thunder, and I can't wait to read his follow-up memoir, his "American Manhood" in another world far removed from the East Berlin of his youth.

The notion of paintings that have the ability to come to life is not a new one. I suspect I'm the only person alive today who remembers a bizarre made-for-tv movie entitled, "The Peanut Butter Solution", but I assure you that living paintings were integral to the plot. Similarly, the book, "Liang and the Magic Paintbrush" by Demi is a Reading Rainbow selection about a boy and his ability to create living creatures simply by drawing them. Heck, "Harold and His Purple Crayon" by Crockett Johnson covers similar ground as well! So I was not initially impressed by the notions behind Jon Agee's, "The Incredible Painting of Felix Clousseau". Reading it, however, I found it to be much different from these other drawings-come-to-life plots I'd heard of before. Above all, it's humorous, something the other books definitely lack.

It begins with a contest. At the Royal Palace of Paris a "Contest of Art" is held for all the painters in the city. People come from miles around to display their work, and one of them is Felix Clousseau. Clousseau presents his painting, a mere slip of a work of a duck, and the judges are embarrassed for him. When the painting quacks, however, they can't give Felix the top prize fast enough. Suddenly everyone in the city wants a Clousseau of their very own. The trouble is, sometimes Felix's paintings cause more damage than good. With no one to really blame but the painter himself, the owners of the erroneous works of art throw him into prison forthwith. It is only the timely intervention of a thief and a watchdog artwork that shows people the true advantages of owning Felix's paintings. Our last shot is of Felix trudging merrily into his studio... and into a painting of a street. As the book points out, he "returned to his painting".

Originally written in 1988 (the same year as "Liang and the Magic Paintbrush", but we won't dwell on that fact) the book is a lovely book to look at. Agee uses beautifully angular black lines to draw everything from affectionate boa constrictors to dapper men in suits. The colors in this book are muted reds, greens, with a lot of grey and brown around them. I don't think I'm wrong when I say that the illustrations in this book are simply a joy to look at in and of themselves. Felix himself is a particularly odd creation. Wearing a beret, a green suit, and spiffy spats you can make out nothing of his face except his beard, nose, and glasses. You never see him actually painting anything, which is odd as well, but then you don't really see him doing much of anything at all in this book. He trudges along with hardly at glance to either side of him. There's not a lot you can gather from a fellow like Felix Clousseau. He obviously keeps to himself.

In the end, it's a lovely book. If you have kids that fall in love with it and insist that it be read to them over and over again, you won't cringe at the thought. When a book is this lovingly thought out, it's a pleasure to peruse. "The Incredibly Painting of Felix Clousseau" may tread over familiar ground, but it does so in a way that is particularly of its own devising. It's hard not to have fun with a book that's so clearly well written. A tip of the hat to Jon Agee's creation.

An excellent story for artists of all ages. It is short and simple, with a wonderful twist at the end. I have presented this book as a gift to more than one artist friend, and the reaction has always been positive. A truly "cool" book.

My kids loved it; highly recommended! It's so nice to find an intelligent children's book that amuses adults.

When the Royal Palace hosts an art contest, all the great artists come out to submit their paintings, like Gaston du Stroganoff with his painting, "The King on his Throne". However, an unknown artist named Felix Closseau also enters the contest. Except where everyone else's paintings are huge and feature the king, Felix's painting is small, and is of a duck.

Considering how seriously the French take their art, you can imagine the uproar at this ridiculous painting. That is, until the duck QUACKS. Then, the duck merrily waddles OUT of the picture itself, and off on it's way. Felix wins first prize.

At first, everyone wants to own a Closseau, until disaster strikes wherever his works are hung. A painting called "The Sleeping Python" is held in high regard, until the Python wakes up one night!! Volcanoes fill rooms with smoke, waterfalls gush gallons onto the floor, Closseau himself is put into jail! That is, until one night when a thief breaks into the royal palace to steal the crown...

Jon Agee has written or illustrated over a dozen books, including books playing with language-books of oxymorons and palindromes, most noticeably. However, "The Incredible Painting..." ranks as one of my personal favorites because of it's original story and fun ending. It's story is fun, quick moving and easy to read (though beginning readers may have difficulty decoding some of the French-ish names). Closseau himself is quite a character, too: a short stooped man with beret and enormous graybeard that successfully hides his face (and most of the rest of him!). Very young children will love the fun absurdity of things coming out of the pictures, while older children will appreciate the havoc that a living painting can wreck! Fun and highly recommended!

There is no bigger influence in a girl's life than her mother. "Riding Shotgun: Women Write About Their Mothers" is an anthology of twenty-one pieces from women writers discussing the enigmas that are their mothers. Be it simple wisdom such as cooking or skill to win at scrabble every single time, these stories of mothers are heartwarming and charming, and will bring a smile to the face of any reader. "Riding Shotgun: Women Write About Their Mothers" is deftly compiled and highly recommended for community library women's studies collections.

Riding Shotgun is a remarkably honest and truly heartening gathering of essays, demonstrating with clarity and force the myriad ways that mothers and daughters share love and lives. But you needn't be a mother or a daughter - only human - to recognize what's universal in these painful, redemptive, wise, and often sweetly comic essays. This is simply a wonderful collection!

This book is an excellent collection of essays from women who grew up in very different situations, and with very different relationships with their mothers. Read this book with your mother and/or your sister; it's bound to strike a chord.

Women are from Venus. Women's Intuition. The Feminine Mystique. Whatever you want to call it, women have a different kind of sensitivity and power from their Y-chromosomed counterparts, and that perception may be the most finely tuned with regard to one's mother.

"We know things, my sisters assure me. We know the future. No, sometimes we know the future, I caution. My dead sister knew who was calling before she picked up the phone. I know when a person is moving toward me across time and place. I think of them and they come back into my life. What does all this mean? I ask my mother. What have you done to us?"
--from Jonis Agee's "Storm Warnings"

That's just one of the things you'll experience firsthand reading Riding Shotgun: Women Write About Their Mothers [Borealis Books], a series of personal essays edited by Kathryn Kysar. To rise into and assume the mantle of womanhood means different things to different women, but one thing is clear: no one gets through it without a few scratches--and if you're lucky, some good advice, a proud example, and maybe a few hugs and kisses-- from Mommy.

Just in time for Mother's Day, Riding Shotgun is a different kind of celebration. Grown women from all kinds of backgrounds take a literary look at this intense, sometimes frightening, intimidating, funny, and at best, loving universal relationship between daughters and their mothers. You'll find true-tales from great contemporary writers such as Sandra Benitez, Tai Coleman, Alison McGhee, Susan Steger Welsh, Denise Low, Susan Power, Carrie Pomeroy, and many others. Reading more like short stories than essays trying to preach anything, Riding Shotgun examines women--and humanity-- in a fresh way. No need for sentimental sweet greeting card poetry, or teary apple-pie baking puppy dog tales. This is a new age, a great mix of culture, and a celebration of uniquely feminine power, as daughters, parents, caregivers, cooks, gardeners, friends, victims, bullies, crazy people and everything in between. Because after all, why be cliché? We're different.

Aren't you glad?

Kathryn Kysar, the author of Dark Lake, teaches writing in Minneapolis. She has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, Norcroft, the Anderson Center for Interdisciplinary Studies, and the Banfill-Locke Center for the Arts.

[...]

This is not a book for children. Rather it is a recollection of images and perceptions of the adult/child who survived the camps of World War Two to tell the tale. Cordelia Edvardson is a humanist who wants the world to abolish all that is inhumane most especially when it comes to children. She knows what its like to be taunted, terrified and have a tortured soul. A must for every policy maker, teacher, and whoever still believes in preserving a sane world.
glenys sugarman

This was just a great book. No books that I've read on this subject have been quite so compelling!

The author mesmerizes you with the simplicity and eloquence of her writing. She moves you with her childhood, her courage in the camps and the power of her spirit in returning to choose life again.

i bought this book cause i didnt really know anything about donald judds work. he had been mentioned to me at school, and after getting this book i am blown away by judds works. this book is filled with incredible pictures of his sculpture, if you ever get the chance, go see this stuff in real life, its even more amazing !

A book which offers an exploration of an often neglected aspect of Judd's oeuvre, this series of essays questions the long-standing acceptance of critical writing regarding Judd's work in particular and Minimalism in general. Expanding his role as more than a strict formalist, these writers portray Judd as a sensualist and illusionist. Pointing out Judd's beginnings as a painter, and Judd's own pronouncements that he considers himself to be a painter, the collection of essays denies the limited definition of Judd's work offered by most critical writing as strictly formal, anti-illusionist, geometric, repetitious, and industrial in manufacture and material. Instead, these writers note the highly reflective surfaces of brass or aluminum Judd employs to effectively dissolve the forms themselves through their multiple reflections of adjacent surfaces.

Judd's use of color is emphasized through comparisons with the late career pasted papers of Matisse. The concept is offered that when Judd cuts the colored plexiglass so often incorporated in his work, he is literally cutting color the way Matisse did his colored paper cut-outs. Many of Judd's box sculptures utilize reflected color from the translucent plexiglass that often gives the smooth metal surfaces the illusion of being painted.

Fittingly, Judd himself is given the final word. In his essay "Some aspects of color in general and red and black in particular" (1993), Judd discusses in introductory terms his obviously complex color theories, influenced by years of research into the writings of theorists and other artists. Interestingly enough, Judd spends a good deal of time discussing his use of space, which he claims as largely uncharted territory, except in his own work. This focus on the spatial aspect of Judd's work is somewhat at odds with the other essayist's insistence on color as a dominant feature of Judd's oeuvre.

Judd reveals his concept of red and black as a two-color monochrome, and other ideas of how colors and values may be thought of in pairs. Judd states that he had difficult decisions to make for his late polychrome objects, as he wanted the color combinations to be neither harmonious nor disharmonious, but rather have them all "present at once."

Donald Judd has always showed colors in a different perspective, using canvas that you can almost smell, touch and fall in love with These book its a master piece that will make all your sences explode.

The English language is filled with quirks and puzzles. In Dictionary Of Troublesome Words, copy editor Bill Bryson provides the reader with an expert guide to avoiding the traps and snares of what is justifiably considered the most complicated and dominant languages of the world today. Bryson's A-Z dictionary clearly outlines some of the more common problems involved in using ordinary words such as 'either', future', or 'may well be'. Dictionary Of Troublesome Words is another browser's joyride in the proper pursuit of English and a welcome addition to personal, school, and community library reference collections.

Palindromes form different words when considered from left to right or right to left (e.g., dog/god). This zany collection provides words or phrases which read the same forward or backward, pairing the zany phrases with entertaining comic strip cartoons. A whimsical, fun gift for the English major.

This book is 112 pages of entertaining cartoons of palindromes. Jon Agee creates whimsical one to four panel stories in which all sentances are palindromes (the same forwards and backwards) and then illustrates them to bring them to life. If you enjoy palindromes, this is the perfect item for you.

Who Ordered the Jumbo Shrimp? is a hilarious book. When I first opened it, it didn't look to funny. But as i got into it, I began laughing out loud at the ones like, "Poor Little Rich Girl," where the rich girl "hasn't had decent caviar in two days, please help. $50, $100, $200 donations. VISA and EMAX excepted." All in all, this a great book to read if you want some good laughs, and if you are looking for a book to stick your nose in. (I gaurantee that once you start, you won't put it down untill you have read the back cover)

Jon Agee's Who Ordered The Jumbo Shrimp? And Other Oxymorons is a delightfully humorous book that brings classic contradictory phrases like "freezer burn", "concrete jungle," "inherited debt" and more to life with the simple, stylistic black-and white cartoons of the wryly talented Jon Agee. A laugh-out-loud funny selection of visual and verbal gags and an ideal giftbook for anyone who enjoys a quick read and a good chuckle.

Oxymorons are, of course, words or phrases that are inherently contradictory: "jumbo shrimp", for example. Jon Agee has taken everyday phrases that so easily fall from all our lips and made us realize how delightfully ridiculous they really are. A scorched and burned man stands at his refrigerator while fire shoots from the top compartment. Why, it's FREEZER BURN, of course!! How about a group of drivers pulling their racecars?? Yup, you got it: that's DRAG RACE for you.

Mr. Agee is perhaps better known for his children's books, "Dmitri the Astronaut" and "If Snow Comes", but he's also a master of wordplay, with three other books of palindromes (words or phrases that are spelled the same way forward as backwards) and a book of anagrams (words that can be spelled with the same letters: "Elvis Lives"). These books of oddities of English would be as at home in a classroom as on the living room shelf. Indeed, as a teacher, I often pull one or two of his works into class to get the creative juices flowing with my students as they try to compose their own anagrams, palindromes and oxymorons.

While the book is by no means complete--there are hundreds of oxymorons--it is one of the few published books of contradictory phrases and certainly the only one I know that is illustrated! While I would have liked to see some of the more "controversial" ones (you know, the one's that might--GASP!!-- offend someone, like "military intelligence", "friendly fire" or "athletic scholarship"), the book is definitely recommended to add to your collection, whether you're a wordsmith or not.