The Little General and the Giant Snowflake Book

I don't think this is really a children's book.

Originally the book was published by Softskull, and then re-issued by Tin House (or is it the other way around?), neither publisher known for publishing books for kids. I think this is a book for adults, disguised as a kids book, and maybe it can be read to kids but I don't know if kids would like it all that much. Maybe they would though.

The book is about two groups, those with and those without imagination. Or so the reader is told. The reader is lied to though. The non-imagination side actually has quite a bit of imagination. Their leader had enough creativity to think up over three hundred different positions his troops could stand in. He has the imagination (well delusion) needed to believe himself not to be a three foot tall little person. His sergeant has the imagination necessary to imagine what a life would be like where she could openly love the general. The general has the imagination to think up punishments like catch every rabbit and then wash and dry each one. The whole army of the non-imagination side also has the imagination the prepare for a war with the hippies over yonder who think they have a monopoly on the land of imagination because of their silly antics.

Granted the non-imagination people are a tad bit militaristic with their imaginations, and sometimes a little to orderly, but there is imagination at work.

On the imagination side are, as I noted above, a bunch of fucking hippies to are apparently tripping face and think things that aren't really present are. This isn't imagination, it's partly imagination, but it's also drug abuse or mental instability.

What this book seems to be saying is that there is a nightmarish land where one is either trapped in a Military Industrial Complex or part of some dirty hippie commune (California?) and that at the end when these two groups meet up it will spell disaster for all the rest of us sane individuals who think that maybe baby boomer dopey hippies turning into bomb-the-shit of them hawks (Hi former President Clinton!!) while all tricked out on an infantile End of History, we're the Rock n' Roll generation, no one will ever know better than us tinged apocalyptic fantasies (I mean please shut the fuck up already you sixties degenerates, you were wrong about y2k, you've ushered in the whole Rapture / Born Again bullshit with your post-60's Jesus Freak thing, and it's your aging hippie asses that are pushing the hell out of this whole 2012 thing, guess what baby boomers, you're not the end of the world (well unless you destroy it, you've still got time!), your messianic complexes were cute, now give it up, ok?). The rest of us who don't think we are the most important thing to ever be created, don't worship the military or believe that the only other form of existence is to have your head shoved up your ass and giggle over imaginary beings, and dedicate your life to pretending they exist.

That last paragraph is a mess, and well it's going to stay a mess.

I like the idea in this book that one needs to not lose sight of their imagination, but it also seems to only see one limited and, well, kind of scary form of imagination.

The book is fun though if you aren't high strung and reading into the book for things that aren't intentionally there. And the drawings of the lemmings are very very cute.