Around the Corner - Spaceship stoplights.

We have a new ancient children's book, thanks to the bravery of the Phil Are GO! Garage Sale Assault Force. It's a 1961 revised printing of Around the Corner (presumably revised to omit the playful limericks of Josef Mengele). No, it was not owned by Rosemary the Namer. She was about thirty years old by the time this book was printed, anyway.

A similar fate should befall all clowns.

Kathy N. owned this copy, and she either lacked the imagination or energy to make up new names for all the characters in the drawings and deface the book with them.

Our focus today is the poem on page 132. It's a bland and mercifully short poem ironically named Something to Think About, by Carolyn Forsyth. It raises the completely un-timelss question of what stoplight lenses will be shaped like in the space age.

The PAG! Research and Googling team was unable to dredge up any information on a poet or writer called Carolyn Forsyth. So, perhaps she career soared just as high as her poetic talents deserved? Three lines, rhyming "cars", "Mars", and "stars". The bar is pretty low for children's literature. If you can't scrape together an idea worth the attention of a grownup, there could be a rewarding future for you writing the forgettable and uninteresting nothingness that fills the pages of most kids' books. Why kids should be punished with the dreary musings of talentless zeros is a mystery.

There's a lot of terrible art in children's literature, too. If you can't draw, consider doing a children's book. Apparently, parents will interpret "shitty" as "charming". This kind of makes sense when you think about how giddy new parents can get over their new baby's first dump. Look how successful the eye-punishing Rugrats cartoon was. The characters looked like monsters. The writing was 10/10, but the animation was 0/9,000,000.

However, the art in this book is really cool. This space painting features some wonderfully outdated notions about spacecraft as well as airplanes. All vessels must be covered in pointy bits! And even some of the pointy bits must be further decorated with pointy bits! Yes, please. In fact, here are the plane and ship from this painting, all alpha channeled and ready to be dropped into whatever document you like. Get your rude finger ready to right click these little creampuffs into your hard drive's hangar in three, two, one, RIGHTCLICKNOW! You're welcome! Don't forget to make some "fooosh"-ing noises with your mouth.

Fuck you, perspective! We've got galaxies to invade explore!