Essay / Avant-Garde

Gollum Diagrams a Sentence

When your main line of dialogue is “my precious,” it’s not easy to diagram your sentences. But Gollum will try. And Freddy Age Eleven will take a break from his English homework to illustrate it. Crumpled papers litter the floor, with “papers about to be

Essay / Avant-Garde

Behold the Cat Card

The artist known as Phoebe Age Nine has been working on this piece for a while. Every few days her friends, fans, and gallery agent have been asking, “Is the Cat Card done yet?” The terse but unworried answer has been, “Not yet. There’s still

Essay / Avant-Garde

Supercat!

Supercat! Faster than a speeding bullet! More powerful than a locomotive! Able to leap over tall buildings in a single bound! Yes, Supercat! Saving kittens as crowds cheer! Super, duper, supercat!

Essay / Avant-Garde

Dragon Drawing Comes to Life

Freddy Age Eleven is a prolific artist who draws dragons daily. His studio is littered with them, a hoard of sketches big enough to make Smaug jealous. But for Halloween, he undertook a collaboration with Sanders Consulting, a company that specializes in taking sketches and

Essay / Avant-Garde

Decliration of DaddyLand

Here is a little glimpse of what an intense writing schedule apparently looks like to the fourth-grader who shares the home with the busy scholar. The thing on the (awesome retro-modernist) table is a small scroll containing the Decliration of DaddyLand. What Daddy has to

Essay / Avant-Garde

Line, Not Spine

The artist known as Phoebe Age Nine submits an anatomical study. Or does she? A skeletal study is a foundational beginner’s exercise in many life drawing courses, but an artist as original and accomplished as PA9 is not likely to publish a simple exercise in

Essay / Avant-Garde

Illuminated Manuscript w/Dragon

The church bulletin featured a photomontage based on Jean-Francois Millet’s 1857 painting The Angelus. But Freddy Age Ten, perhaps influenced by the recent craze for street art, added a little something. The average viewer thinks of this descending dragon as a menacing presence, perhaps as

Essay / Avant-Garde

Contour of Two-Fisted Gun Monger with Knife Breath

Since the violence-drenched, action-soaked, gore-marinated trailer, there has been much debate about the details of Two-Fisted Gun Monger with Knife Breath. What does his costume look like? How many guns does he mong? How do the knives come out on his breath? Here is a

Essay / Avant-Garde

Two-Fisted Gun Monger with Knife Breath!!!

Sure, movies are violent these days. But in between the violent bits, there’s always a bunch of dialogue and character development and stuff. What we really need is a movie designed for pure violence. What we need is a character who is designed for nothing

Essay / Avant-Garde

Happy Thanksgiving from the Pumpkin Diner

There’s an attitude of gratitude at the pumpkin diner, as the meals-with-friends-and-family part of the holiday kicks in. You can either be grumbly and hateful, or humbly grateful, so which is it gonna be? Today’s special speshle is turkey ham, according to the little bird

Essay / Avant-Garde

Psalmtooning 4: Ponder Ponder Ponder

The fourth Psalm, in graphic form by renowned interpreter Freddy Age Nine: Following a medieval tradition, Freddy Age Nine has taken the first letter of the Psalm (A is for “Answer me when I call”) and made it the architectural center of the composition. The

Essay / Avant-Garde

Star Wars Halloween Dance Party!!!

What are you dressing as, and what dance are you doing? Astromech Droid Artoo Unit Waltz (Bleep Blaap Blooop Danube) Ewok Sabre Dance (but Ewoks don’t have sabres, so here’s a spear) Begin the Boba Beguine (or is it the Jango Jig?) Poppin and Lockin