[Plura-list] The Big Box of Sparkly Unicorn Magic

[Cory Doctorow]

Read today's issue online at: https://pluralistic.net/2022/06/05/heavenly-nostrils/

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Next Weds (Jun 8), I'm giving a talk at OpenJSWorld in Austin:

https://events.linuxfoundation.org/openjs-world/program/schedule/

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Today's links

* The Big Box of Sparkly Unicorn Magic: If Hobbes was a snarky unicorn and Calvin was an awesome little girl.

* Hey look at this: Delights to delectate.

* This day in history: 2007, 2012, 2017, 2021

* Colophon: Recent publications, upcoming/recent appearances, current writing projects, current reading

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💊 The Big Box of Sparkly Unicorn Magic

Back in 2015, when my daughter Poesy was seven, I read her a story every night at bedtime. It was a glorious time, not just for our father-daughter relationship, but for my own relationship with kids' literature, which is a spectacular and rich part of the publishing world that grownups frequently have no contact with.

One of the great successes of our bedtime story ritual was our discovery of Dana Simpson's "Phoebe and Her Unicorn" comics, whose only defect was that they were *too* funny, and we'd laugh so hard at bedtime that it was hard to get the kid to sleep. That's a good problem to have! Here's my review of that first book:

https://memex.craphound.com/2015/02/02/heavenly-nostrils-if-hobbes-was-a-snarky-unicorn-and-calvin-was-an-awesome-little-girl/

> We almost didn’t read Phoebe and Her Unicorn; it sat on my daughter’s shelf for months, untouched, because it looked like something pink and princess-y, and that’s not really her thing. But the kid got it down and started reading it to herself — really reading it to herself, as in, we’d have to take it away from her when it was time to get ready for school. My wife glanced at it, and asked if I’d ever really looked at it: “It’s really funny!”

> So that night, I started reading it to Poesy at bedtime. Even though she’d already read halfway through, she was very happy to have me re-read those early strips to her. And I was even more glad to do it. I quickly discovered that Dana Simpson was doing something wonderful with Heavenly Nostrils: telling a hilarious, sweet, and unsentimental story about a kid and her imaginary friend ripped straight from the Bill Watterson/Calvin and Hobbes playbook, but with new, lateral moves that are strictly her own.

> Phoebe meets Marigold Heavenly Nostrils in the woods one summer vacation, coming upon the magical creature transfixed by her own reflection in a pond (being captivated by one’s own lovely reflection is the unicorn’s downfall). Phoebe throws a rock in the pond and is offered a wish for rescuing the unicorn: “to be my best friend.”

> Unlike Hobbes, Marigold isn’t a toy, and unlike Hobbes, Marigold can be seen by people other than Phoebe. However, Marigold has an adjustable SHIELD OF BORINGNESS that she can dial up in the presence of Phoebe’s parents so that they find nothing remarkable about the fact that she’s invited a unicorn over for dinner. This is a great wrinkle on imaginary friends, a reversal of the Calvin and Hobbes world where Calvin sees the world as he wants it to be and everyone else contends with dull reality-as-it-is; in Phoebe’s house, she and Marigold alone are living in the real world and everyone else is blinded by magic and unable to see things as they are.

> Like Calvin and Hobbes, Phoebe and Calvin’s adventures work on many levels — anarchic kid humor, snarky adult humor, slightly over-their-head jokes that kids enjoy once they’re explained. We read from Phoebe and Her Unicorn every night a bedtime and when it was done, we followed the directions in the appendix and practiced drawing our own unicorns and little freckled girls. Peter “The Last Unicorn” Beagle wrote a tremendous introduction to this volume!

Simpson is incredibly prolific; I just counted and there are *twenty-one* Phoebe and Her Unicorn books!

https://publishing.andrewsmcmeel.com/browse-books/?_sft_product_author=dana-simpson

The first four of these books have now been collected in a boxed set called "The Magical Adventures of Phoebe and Her Unicorn," bound together in a fat, satisfying paperback, that's big enough to feel exciting, but not too big for small hands to grasp.

https://publishing.andrewsmcmeel.com/book/the-big-sparkly-box-of-unicorn-magic/

Included in this anthology is the third Phoebe and Her Unicorn book, *Unicorns vs Goblins*, which contains the introduction my daughter Poesy and I co-wrote. Here's a bit of that:

> When Sesame Street launched, the show was all kids' jokes. Think of Barney the $#@@{!#* Dinosaur. About as much fun for adults as a fiberglass smoothie. But Jim Henson and the Children's Television Workshop pulled the show and went back to the drawing board, redesigning it so that it had as many adult jokes as kid ones -- and so that adults and kids would have a reason to sit and watch together. Whatever value the show had, they reasoned, it would be multiplied if parents and kids shared an experience together, if they had something to talk about after.

This new edition of Phoebe is a perfect parent-kid bridge, especially if you supplement it with 2017's *Rainy Day Unicorn Fun*, a genuinely great activity book for Phoebe fans, with crosswords, wordsearch, sudoku and art activities:

https://publishing.andrewsmcmeel.com/book/rainy-day-unicorn-fun/

Teachers and librarians: take note of the excellent, downloadable classroom guide:

https://www.ampkids.com/teaching_guide/phoebe-teaching-guide/

If that's not enough, here are my original reviews of the four books collected in this new volume:

Book 1: Phoebe and Her Unicorn
https://memex.craphound.com/2015/02/02/heavenly-nostrils-if-hobbes-was-a-snarky-unicorn-and-calvin-was-an-awesome-little-girl/

Book 2: Unicorn on a Roll
https://memex.craphound.com/2015/06/13/unicorn-on-a-roll-more-comics-in-the-tradition-of-calvin-and-hobbes/

Book 3: Unicorns Vs Goblins
https://memex.craphound.com/2015/06/13/unicorn-on-a-roll-more-comics-in-the-tradition-of-calvin-and-hobbes/

Book 4: Razzle-Dazzle Unicorn
https://memex.craphound.com/2016/09/22/phoebe-and-her-unicorn-are-back-in-razzle-dazzle-unicorn/

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💊 Hey look at this

*  Lilibet: Potentate of Holy Terra https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y_xoSNluXgg (h/t Super Punch)

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💊 This day in history

#15yrsago Do the Right Thing recreated with Sesame Street toys https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L-1s9MKDrmU

#15yrsago RIAA and Universal accused of extortion https://recordingindustryvspeople.blogspot.com/2007/06/riaa-accused-of-extortion-and.html

#10yrsago Austerity obliterates ecology: Canadian budget to make environmental impact statements optional, class eco-groups as money-launderers http://www.blackoutspeakout.ca/

#10yrsago Why the modems screamed https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/06/the-mechanics-and-meaning-of-that-ol-dial-up-modem-sound/257816/

#10yrsago John Scalzi, Charlie Stross and I explain why Tor Books went DRM-free https://www.tor.com/2012/06/04/tor-books-announces-e-book-store-doctorow-scalzi-a-stross-talk-drm-free/

#10yrsago RIP, Erik “Possum Man” Stewart https://memex.craphound.com/2012/06/05/rip-erik-possum-man-stewart/

#10yrsago Austerity Jubilee: unemployed workers tricked into being Jubilee stewards, denied toilets, left to camp in the rain https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2012/jun/04/jubilee-pageant-unemployed

#10yrsago Scalzi’s Redshirts: existentialist comedy space opera https://memex.craphound.com/2012/06/05/scalzis-redshirts-existentialist-comedy-space-opera/

#5yrsago Theresa May wants to ban crypto: here’s what that would cost, and here’s why it won’t work anyway https://memex.craphound.com/2017/06/04/theresa-may-wants-to-ban-crypto-heres-what-that-would-cost-and-heres-why-it-wont-work-anyway/

#5yrsago Oculus Founder/alt-right troll Palmer Luckey teaming up with Peter Thiel to build surveillance techhttps://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/04/business/oculus-palmer-luckey-new-start-up.html

#5yrsago Leaked NSA docs: Russian military hacked US voting software company, spearphished 122 election officials https://theintercept.com/2017/06/05/top-secret-nsa-report-details-russian-hacking-effort-days-before-2016-election/

#1yrago Recommendation engines and "lean-back" media: The failure of "From the Desk of Donald J. Trump" and linear programming https://pluralistic.net/2021/06/05/lean-back/#lean-forward

#1yrago Aaron Swartz, vindicated https://pluralistic.net/2021/06/04/aaronsw/#cfaa

#1yrago Capitalism's crooked refs https://pluralistic.net/2021/06/04/aaronsw/#crooked-ref

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💊 Colophon

Today's top sources:

Currently writing:

* Some Men Rob You With a Fountain Pen, a Martin Hench noir thriller novel about the prison-tech industry. Friday's progress: 523 words (11934 words total)

* The Internet Con: How to Friday the Means of Computation, a nonfiction book about interoperability for Verso. Yesterday's progress: 527 words (8433 words total)

* Picks and Shovels, a Martin Hench noir thriller about the heroic era of the PC. (92849 words total) - ON PAUSE

* A Little Brother short story about DIY insulin PLANNING

* Vigilant, Little Brother short story about remote invigilation. FIRST DRAFT COMPLETE, WAITING FOR EXPERT REVIEW

* Moral Hazard, a short story for MIT Tech Review's 12 Tomorrows. FIRST DRAFT COMPLETE, ACCEPTED FOR PUBLICATION

* Spill, a Little Brother short story about pipeline protests. FINAL DRAFT COMPLETE

* A post-GND utopian novel, "The Lost Cause."  FINISHED

* A cyberpunk noir thriller novel, "Red Team Blues."  FINISHED

Currently reading: Analogia by George Dyson.

Latest podcast: Apple’s Cement Overshoes https://craphound.com/news/2022/05/30/apples-cement-overshoes/

Upcoming appearances:

* OpenJSWorld (Austin), Jun 8
https://events.linuxfoundation.org/openjs-world/program/schedule/

* UK Competition and Markets Authority Data Technology and Analytics conference (London), Jun 15-16
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/cma-data-technology-and-analytics-conference-2022-registration-308678625077

* A New HOPE (NYC), Jul 24
https://www.hope.net/

Recent appearances:

* The Sci-Fi Feedback Loop: Mapping Fiction’s Influence on Real-World Tech
https://csi.asu.edu/calendar/events/the-sci-fi-feedback-loop-mapping-fictions-influence-on-real-world-tech/

* Privacy is the New Celebrity
https://www.buzzsprout.com/1806101/10643084

* Revolutionizing Activism — The Power of Utopia (Center for Artistic Activism)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8TBlSc3PNUA

Latest book:

* "Attack Surface": The third Little Brother novel, a standalone technothriller for adults. The *Washington Post* called it "a political cyberthriller, vigorous, bold and savvy about the limits of revolution and resistance." Order signed, personalized copies from Dark Delicacies https://www.darkdel.com/store/p1840/Available_Now%3A_Attack_Surface.html

* "How to Destroy Surveillance Capitalism": an anti-monopoly pamphlet analyzing the true harms of surveillance capitalism and proposing a solution. https://onezero.medium.com/how-to-destroy-surveillance-capitalism-8135e6744d59 (print edition: https://bookshop.org/books/how-to-destroy-surveillance-capitalism/9781736205907) (signed copies: https://www.darkdel.com/store/p2024/Available_Now%3A__How_to_Destroy_Surveillance_Capitalism.html)

* "Little Brother/Homeland": A reissue omnibus edition with a new introduction by Edward Snowden: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250774583; personalized/signed copies here: https://www.darkdel.com/store/p1750/July%3A__Little_Brother_%26_Homeland.html

* "Poesy the Monster Slayer" a picture book about monsters, bedtime, gender, and kicking ass. Order here: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781626723627. Get a personalized, signed copy here: https://www.darkdel.com/store/p1562/_Poesy_the_Monster_Slayer.html.

Upcoming books:

* Chokepoint Capitalism: How to Beat Big Tech, Tame Big Content, and Get Artists Paid, with Rebecca Giblin, nonfiction/business/politics, Beacon Press, September 2022

This work licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. That means you can use it any way you like, including commercially, provided that you attribute it to me, Cory Doctorow, and include a link to pluralistic.net.

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

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