Title: When a Moose Has a Mustache
Author/Illustrator: Sam Caldwell
Format: Board book with fold outs
Target Age: Baby to Four
Publisher: Gibbs Smith
Review Author: Keith Dorwick
When a Moose Has a Mustache is a fun and wonderful fold out book (called a “lift-the-flap” book on the front cover) intended for very young readers; I would guess we’re talking Baby to Four. The drawings are lively; Sam Caldwell has included a number of anthropomorphized animals, each proudly bearing their own mustaches and placing them in a number of situations in which their mustache would be affected. What happens, for instance, when a bear with a mustache growls: it turns out, once the reader turns the flap, the mustache straightens out.
And of course, each animals’ mustache reacts its own way, with the final surprise being what happens when the reader has a mustache. We’re told “it can be a lot of fun,” and that text is accompanied with a mirror bound right into the book which shows the reader adorned with a mustache of his (or her) very own.
The drawings are wonderful, especially as each animal is surrounded with its own landscape complete with appropriate animals and plants. The deer, for example, is dressed in a jaunty running suit with red shorts, red tank top with white piping, and snazzy red sneakers.
It’s a very short book made for small hands to read with an adult’s help, and it’s all very simple but fun. Very young children would very much enjoy this work, largely because it’s extremely silly!
Ok, time to start over on this thing! I’ll be posting my old work and adding new work as I go.
My goal? To add one of my works at minimum every week!
You’re welcome to add stuff, too, if I like it, by sending stuff to submission at discombobulated dot info and letting me take a look at it!
Every blog and every journal is made for its own authors and editors to create as they see fit (and hopefully for others to read!) As both a writer and an editor, I find myself fascinated by things that are somehow skew. The norm in our culture, of course, is late capitalism, and it’s beginning to kill us all, at an ever increasing pace. We need the forces that work against that, or at least help to keep those things in check.
For me, those are such things as the arts, politics, religion and spirituality, health, and so many more. As a gay/bi man/non-binary writer, I enjoy writing about the arts, music and theater in particular, and currently serve as the US writer for British Theatre Guide. In religion, I write, a lot about religion and spirituality, and write a monthly column for the Peninsula Daily News in Port Angeles WA where I live in the US. I’m also an artist and as I make things, I might just post them.
You’re welcome to come along for the ride. If you find yourself constantly thinking of things in ways others don’t, or making art or music that’s odd or different,. feel free to send your work to submissions at discombobulated dot info and I’ll take a look at it. Deal? Beginners are definitely welcome! And sound experiments? Definitely welcome!
In the long run, I hope this blog slowly and surely morphs into a journal.
Hit me up!
Keith Dorwick
Editor, discombobulated.info
https://discombobulated.info
Our pledge: We want to go on record right from the start and let the whole world know that we stand for our right to full freedom of speech from oppressive and evil governments, and resist the way in which this country is moving to an authoritarian and anti-democratic ideology.
And we argue that we must all call for a wide range of resistance to these dark times. This is of the utmost importance for the health of artists, writers, and other makers and for a healthy citizenry.
