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A is for Anarchist

BILLY WOODS AND M. MUSGROVE

An introduction to the counter-culture ABCs for all ages: read the ABCs as told by billy woods.

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In the tradition of sophisticated primers like Shel Silverstein’s ABZ Book or Oliver Jeers’s Once Upon an Alphabet and a fresh twist on the classic ABC book tailor-made for the twenty-rst century, A is for Anarchist has a provocative DIY/street-culture ethos in the tradition of old-school punk and the golden age of hip-hop culture. This fun and inspirational work takes modest terms, such as E is for Energy, and subverts it to show meanings in the context of the current state of the world, such as “A car gets energy from dangerous chemicals that are buried deep underground. Once our planet runs out of energy, things are going to get exciting.” With captions written by rising star billy woods, who NPR named the best rapper of 2019, the words have a rhythm on the page that is hard to get out of one’s head. The original art by m. amplies the power behind these alternative denitions. If you have gotten this far in reading, you already are an anarchist.

m. musgrove is a painter, comic artist, illustrator and amateur animator. billy woods is an artist who defies easy categorization. He was born in the U.S. but spent much of his childhood in Africa and the West Indies as the second child of a Jamaican intellectual and a would-be Marxist revolutionary. On the mic, woods is no less a conundrum, possessed of versatile flows and not only an ability to tackle topics other artists wouldn’t imagine, but bring unique perspectives to the familiar ones.

HUMOR & GIFT

56 pages, 7½ x 9" 40 color illustrations Hardcover • 9780789341457 $25.00 USD, $34.00 CAD, £18.95 GBP February 28, 2023 Rights: World

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