{"id":248,"date":"2009-07-15T17:18:30","date_gmt":"2009-07-15T21:18:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/2009\/07\/15\/billy-twitters\/"},"modified":"2009-07-15T17:27:10","modified_gmt":"2009-07-15T21:27:10","slug":"billy-twitters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/2009\/07\/15\/billy-twitters\/","title":{"rendered":"A Whale of a Picture Book"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" id=\"image247\" src=\"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/07\/billy-twitters1.jpg\" alt=\"billy-twitters1.jpg\" \/><\/p>\n<p>I don&#8217;t get a lot of pictures books sent my way here at <i>Beatrice<\/i>, but I heard that <a href=\"http:\/\/macbarnett.com\/\">Mac Barnett<\/a>, one of the directors of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.826la.org\">826LA<\/a>, the Los Angeles outpost of Dave Eggers&#8217;s creative writing centers for children and young adults, had collaborated with <a href=\"http:\/\/www.adamrex.com\">Adam Rex<\/a> on something called <a href=\"http:\/\/www.powells.com\/partner\/29017\/biblio\/0786849584\"><i>Billy Twitters and His Blue Whale Problem<\/i><\/a>, and I was intrigued enough to check it out. I&#8217;m so glad I did: Imagine a particularly excellent <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mscweeneys.net\"><i>McSweeney&#8217;s<\/i><\/a> item, geared towards a precocious eight-year-old. With illustrations that are just as smart and sly.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" id=\"image249\" src=\"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/07\/billy-twitters2.jpg\" alt=\"billy-twitters2.jpg\" \/><\/p>\n<p>The deadpan humor is fantastic; frankly, I think grown-ups may well wind up loving this book more than kids&#8212;but I&#8217;m not suggesting that kids <i>won&#8217;t<\/i> get a kick out of it. They&#8217;ll love the silly pictures, and if they don&#8217;t laugh at all the jokes when you read it to them, well, give &#8217;em time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I don&#8217;t get a lot of pictures books sent my way here at Beatrice, but I heard that Mac Barnett, one of the directors of 826LA, the Los Angeles outpost of Dave Eggers&#8217;s creative writing centers for children and young adults, had collaborated with Adam Rex on something called Billy Twitters and His Blue Whale [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/248"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=248"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/248\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=248"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=248"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=248"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}