Redtail Press – förlag

*** Starred reviews from Kirkus and the American Library Association (ALA) ***

If your moral character is flimsy

Or your wit be rather slow,

Oh dare not read these tales of whimsy

For often do they end in woe.

Tales of Whimsy, Verses of Woe is quite possibly the most dangerous book of poetry ever written.

Do you dare? It’s so good it will make you sneeze. What becomes of a girl who absolutely detests

the color green? What about a king who joins a punk band? And the little boy who calls up God on

the telephone? Monsters, bears, wizards, and talking vegetables―This book has something for

everyone. Winner of the prestigious Baldersquash Medal, which honors the very best in highfalutin

nonsense.

Tim DeRoche and Daniel González, author and illustrator of the best-selling Ballad of Huck &

Miguel, return with a book of verse that will delight anyone who loves Lemony Snicket or Shel

Silverstein.

In this beautiful and moving book, bestselling author TimDeRoche makes the case that human beings are hardwired to worship. 

Drawing from evolutionary psychology, he argues that wecannot help but experience life as a gift. And, whether we admit it or not, our biological instincts leave usyearning for a right relationship with the unseen giver.

What makes us human?  Itis the instinct to give and receive gifts from one another.  DeRoche shows how thinkers throughout historyhave obsessed over issues of reciprocity and social obligation: RalphWaldo Emerson, Friedrich Nietzsche, the anthropologist Marcel Mauss, theFreudian psychologist Ernest Becker, and so many more.  And these themes echo through the Hebrew andChristian scriptures, which can be read as an extended meditation on what itmeans to be indebted to God for life itself.

The Grateful Beast offers a new take on the plight ofmodern man, urging us to acknowledge the full mystery of life and to accept theweight of infinite gratitude.