If I Were You - Hardcover

Gary Turchin

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0964609908 ISBN 13: 9780964609907

Publisher: Simon DeWitt & Friends, 2011

Synopsis

It's another amazing day and you get to be amazed moment-by-moment, page by silly page in the colorful and life-affirming new gift book, If I Were You.

The recipe for If I Were You is quite simple: combine quirky illustrations, a poet's deft language, a seeker's curiosity and a comedian's well-honed timing and you get one moving, inspirational and thoroughly goofy book.

Author-illustrator, comedian and amateur philosophy major Gary Turchin has crafted a book that tickles the funny bone, twangs the heartstrings, and touches the soul of any wounded mortal.

This is the feel-good gift book of the year, of any year. A picture book for grown-ups, but grown-ups who are going to have to break down and buy the kids their own copy once they've shared it with them.

In If I Were You, the day begins not with a whimper, but a Wow! So much to be amazed by, and amused by, as we careen through a series of If-I-Were-You observations about life, observations that are both impossible and important. It's a day like no other, and yet it's everyday when we choose to live in wonder.

It is in these observations that If I Were You shines. Its seemingly cornball wisdom somehow makes sense, even when, on the surface, it doesn't. That's because If I Were You is about what's below the surface, what's in our hearts, our hopes, our dreams our wishes, our aspirations.

If I Were You may be the first book to retort the age old, "Well, you know, someday, you ll have to get a real job..." with a, "Well, you know, someday you'll have to get a real dream..."

Game. Set. Match. Dream.

And of course, the If I Were You day ends in gratitude, with thank you in a multitude of languages, and then it's off to dreamland, and other days and other dreams and other golden opportunities for amazement.

Unpretentious, un-preachy, imperfect, improbable, and naively grand, If I Were You has less than 1,000 words, start to finish. Why say more?

About this title

About the Author

Gary Turchin is a poet, children s entertainer, writer, photographer, graphic artist and illustrator who has a 35-year track record of making people think even while they are laughing so hard they have to pee. Gary has entertained tens of thousands of children with his original poetry show, Gary T. & his PoetTree, appearing in hundreds of schools and libraries. He has penned four volumes of verse, crafted two recordings, and won a slew of performing art grants. He s a former Knight-Ridder newspaper columnist in Oakland, Calif., a freelance feature writer, and even did one 6-year stint as an in-house corporate writer for a large non-profit. Gary's visual art has been seen in galleries throughout the West. For years, he designed cleverly thoughtful tee-shirts that were sold in nationally distributed catalogues and at art festivals throughout the West. Gary has a unique sense of humor and philosophical bent that permeates all his art, no matter which medium he works in. As he likes to say, "The medium is not my message. The message is my medium."

Review

"Simple, bright, joyful, easy to read, yet oddly and exquisitely profound. There's too much idle chatter in our world. If I Were You is a quiet little book that says all it needs to say in 1,000 words. But they are words that reverberate long after the reading and amusing is done." --Poet Thomas Tanian

"An astounding book, it dances, shakes, then takes off. Man it is something else, our highest praise." --Poet Adam David Miller

Edition details

• Publisher: Simon DeWitt & Friends
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 0964609908
• ISBN 13: 9780964609907
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 44
• Illustrator: Gary Turchin