Tortoise Boy: A Chamber Play

What's New (Blog)

---

An end note reveals the surprising truth behind the unlikely tale, that a year-old tortoise named Sunny Boy did, indeed, survive a trip over the Falls in a barrel in his human companion did not. Wilsdorf does a bang-up job with her margin-to-margin watercolor-and-ink ill Sunny Boy, a tortoise, tells the humorous story of his long life with various owners, from horticulturist Pelonious to daredevil Biff, who takes Sunny Boy along for the ride when he goes over Niagra Falls in a barrel.

Feb 09, Benjamin Elliott rated it really liked it. I thought this story was a lot of fun, outlining each of the turtle's quirky owners with a twist in sunny boy's fate coming with his fourth owner before being able to set into a mostly sedate life once more. It did, however, call into question the life span of turtles, as he outlives at least three generations of this family without any sign of slowing down.

Also, the similarity between the poacher at the beginning of this story with a similar character in Curious George was fun. Nov 19, Camille rated it liked it Shelves: I really like this fable! This book holds a funny story about a tortoise who longs for "slow-paced days and basking on sun-warmed rocks. But this tortoise, named Sunny Boy, finds himself fraternizing with a few different interesting folks until he is inherited by a a daredevil and is forced to live the antithesis of the quiet life.

I think Fleming really has a wonderful imagination and I like her method of putting it to page. At the end of the story there' I really like this fable! At the end of the story there's short essay about the real tortoise that she based this story on, which I found fascinating, as well. The lesson to be learned is that sometimes you've got to step out of your comfort zone. This is a fun book that I think would do well for a lapsit or a storytime with school-aged kids and maybe precocious preschoolers.

Feb 04, Salsabrarian added it Shelves: A tortoise who enjoys the sedate life is bagged in the jungle to be sent off to a restaurant and made into soup. He doesn't make it to the restaurant but is taken home by a horticulturist who names the tortoise Sunny Boy. Sunny Boy enjoys his quiet life but outlives the horticulturist and is passed down from nephew to nephew, each of whom enjoys quiet pastimes such as stamp-collecting and reading Latin.

Sunny Boy outlives them both and ends up with a nephew who has a taste for daredevil antics. This rocks Sunny Boy's world who longs for his previous sedate owners. But he can't help but feel a thrill when this nephew takes him over the Niagara Falls in a barrel. Told in the tortoise's first-person voice, a tone that goes from contented to shocked and resigned dismay. Aug 01, Rani rated it really liked it Shelves: He outlives all his human 'owners' and studies human behavior closely.

Sunny Boy is snatched away from the forest into human world. He enjoys the activities of his owners- smelling orchids, basking in sunlight, reciting Latin verbs, and licking stamps His most dangerous stunt was to jump over the Niagara falls in a barrell. Biff never lived to tell the tale, and Sunny Boy never told his. A whismical picture book. Oct 18, Bethany rated it it was amazing Shelves: I found this book very interesting.

Featured Partners

There is truth behind this tale. A tortoise really did go over Niagara Falls with his owner and survive. The name and other events in the book maybe fiction, but this book could be used to get shildren interested in learning about the beauty and wonder of Niagara Falls.

The end of the book has a little exerpt about the 15 peoplle who have went down Niagara Falls. Jan 16, The Brothers rated it really liked it Shelves: Sunny Boy the tortoise has led a quiet and uneventful life with a variety of men whose interest range from gardening to stamp collecting to Latin. And he loves his life with each one, but keeps outliving them. He is eventually willed to Biff who is a dare-devil and turns Sunny Boy's life into chaos. Biff teaches Sunny Boy how to enjoy thrills, but also realizes the tortoise needs the quiet life too. Jun 17, Erin rated it really liked it Shelves: As tortoises live a lot longer than humans, they are apt to having more experiences than we are.

This book is based loosely on a real tortoise who went over Niagra Falls with his owner. For a tortoise who likes the slow life, this event was incredibly invigorating! Good for preschool storytimes. Aug 08, Traci rated it it was amazing. Amazing story I never knew but totally intrigued me and made me both scared and happy. Sunny Boy the tortoise did amazing things but not by his choice.

Mar 26, Nicole Massa rated it it was amazing Shelves: This story follows the life of a tortoise and his owners and the adventures that they take him on. Tortoise's have incredibly long life spans and so we are able to travel through many times in history with Sunny Boy.

This book is fun for students but also addresses many historical events. Nov 22, Jeanne rated it really liked it Shelves: Good book for a storytime. Based on a true story. Sunny Boy wishes for a quiet life. All was okay until he outlived his gentle owners and Biff the Brave adopted him.

Tortoise Boy: A Chamber Play - Anvil Press

Sunny Boy was surprised when he got a thrill out of going over Niagra Falls in a barrel. Dec 09, Denise rated it it was amazing. A fun, enjoyable book about the owners a tortoise goes through within his lifetime. It includes a nonfiction sketch at the end of the book that talks about Sunny Boy going over Niagara Falls with one of his owners and what happened afterwards. Aug 20, Jeanna rated it liked it Shelves: Made me want to learn more about the real Sunny Boy.

Also, how cool would it be to visit a museum and see a tortoise just kind of wandering around?! Mar 03, John Delich rated it it was amazing. I love this book! After visiting the falls, and hearing tidbits of history while getting drenched on the boat, I have always been a bit fascinated by the people who go over on purpose! Dec 18, Tracy rated it really liked it. Told from the perspective of a tortoise, who eventually went over Niagara Falls. Fun to read, nice endnotes. Feb 12, Sarah Anderson rated it it was amazing. Really fun book to read to your little ones.

Jul 29, Robin rated it really liked it. Unpredictable adventures of a tortoise. Love the sly Curious George inspired illustrations on some pages. Apr 02, Christine Turner rated it really liked it. Good choice for elementary read a loud. Aug 13, Verity rated it really liked it. This is a fun children's book that I first discovered in Virginia. We picked it up again at the library to celebrate our new pet--Toby the Tortoise! Joy rated it really liked it Sep 06, Amy Hughes rated it liked it Jan 13, Debby Baumgartner rated it it was ok Jan 15, Patty Barr rated it liked it Feb 03, Feb 02, Emily rated it liked it Shelves: Had no ideaa tortoise had gone over Niagara Falls.

Gabe rated it it was amazing Jan 02, Jj rated it really liked it Apr 27, There are no discussion topics on this book yet. Sayyid Qutb, a key early member of the Muslim Brotherhood and one of the ideological forefathers of violent Islamism, lived in the United States and was horrified by much of what he saw, not only by the treatment of different races, but also by the free association of men and women in public; in the language of modern liberals, he was anti-racist but horribly sexist.

And Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the architect of the attacks, graduated from university in North Carolina. So it is not knowledge that will save us, because knowledge, driven by the wrong spirit, will exacerbate our differences. Knowledge can lead us to pick and choose which facts are most important, and to do so in a way that feeds our ravenous egos, rather than nourishing our quiet hunger for peace. Leo Tolstoy, in his seminal pacifist work The Kingdom of God is Within You , identified three possible concepts of how to make sense of the world.

There is, he says, the personal or animal concept, in which people primarily work to gratify themselves. His religion consists in the glorification of the heads of unions—of eponyms, ancestors, kings, and in the worship of gods, the exclusive protectors of his family, his race, his nation, his state. To me, this concept is the root of our present troubles; when we live this way, there is a tendency to conflate morality with what is good or bad for whatever identity we cherish most—our own nation, race, occupation, gender or religion.

People who live by this concept are motivated by love, a love that knows no boundaries or borders, no distinctions of race or class or religion.

This kind of love is a true, active love. For those of us who voted against Donald Trump, there are reasons to be profoundly concerned by his election, inauguration, and early presidency. His legacy is, to say the least, racially charged. He was sued for refusing to rent apartments to African Americans, and ordered to change his practices—and he resisted the settlement. After the arrest of five black and Hispanic youths in connection with the brutal rape of a jogger in Central Park in , he purchased a heated full-page ad decrying the crime and calling for the reintroduction of the death penalty—never mind the fact that the boys were innocent, and ended up being exonerated.

Trump has openly advocated policies that violate the First Amendment of the constitution, and done so in a way that seems designed to exacerbate racial tensions. There are legitimate concerns that Trump won the election, in part, because of voter ID laws that are, according to liberal activists, a resumption of the poll tax by other means—a partial reversal of the gains for which Martin Luther King and John Lewis and many others marched at Selma.

Besides, if my 39 years have taught me anything, it is that nobody responds well when you accuse them of bad motives. Even if they are, in fact, motivated by such negative emotions, they will never admit to it; they will come up with some other nobler-sounding reason for their actions, and they will probably believe it. But we can certainly learn a lot from The Donald by looking at his actions, and if we temper that knowledge with a loving spirit, we might indeed learn something worthwhile.

His career in real estate and reality TV, and his relentless Twitter usage, suggest that he is, perhaps, the quintessential Ugly American, the apotheosis of all we dislike about our country and ourselves. Who among us does not get distracted from necessary work to get caught up in useless spats on social media?

Trump is, perhaps, a funhouse mirror that distorts and exaggerates our worst traits as a country—our hunger for fame and money and power and success and, most crucially, attention. Trump has certainly harped on similar themes; he even leaned on Roger Ailes, former head of Fox News and one-time media consultant to Nixon, for debate preparation help. One hopes Trump, in between angry tweets about SNL cast members and recalcitrant judges, remembers that his occasionally-petty predecessor was willing to show true and lasting leadership in ways that really did make the world a better place.

But change is possible. In one interview, you said you were initially worried about finding enough material to connect the various Venices, and you eventually ended up with the opposite problem. It sounds like you ended up with a surplus of material. How much research did you end up doing after you started the book, versus before, and how did you balance the research and the writing?

As a result, I had very little time to work on anything prior to turning it in. Venice Beach which was built in as an explicit imitation of the original and a Venice-themed hotel and casino in Las Vegas. My research for that first 25 pages was limited to a Las Vegas travel guide, a cursory glance through The Mirror: Perhaps unsurprisingly, the content from my original Page 2 is now on Page 7, Page 13 is now Page 84, Page 15 is now Page , etc. I was just thinking in very general terms of what the book would be about, and how it would work. The first teacher I worked with at Queens was the novelist Jane Alison; Jane immediately handed me my ass.

Jane encouraged me to be respectful of my made-up people: This was by far the most difficult and most rewarding aspect of writing the book. Much of this process was purely meditative: But a lot of it was research-driven, too. Some of my characters are professional gamblers, so I read a lot about blackjack card-counting.

Some of my characters are glassmakers, so I studied up on how glass was manufactured circa Some of my characters are alchemists, so I learned about the Neo-Platonic intellectual tradition in which they partook. A lot of what I came to understand as the deep structure of the novel was concerned with technologies that people have adopted over the centuries in order to regard themselves—along with a bunch of metaphors that these technologies have encouraged—so I researched mirror-making, publishing, painting, poetry, architecture, film, etc.

The process was fairly accretionary. By this point the amount of actual writing I was doing had slowed to a trickle—not the best situation when one is enrolled in a writing program. Certain topics were bottomless: The only thing that I turned up in my research that I regret not being able to feature more prominently is the crazy story of of John Whiteside Parsons , one of the founders of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory who was also an avid practitioner of the occult: Ron Hubbard on rituals intended to summon the goddess Babalon.

It was just too much , man. The story deserves its own novel. By someone other than me. I did work some of this material into a short play I that wrote last year for the Chicago-based Runaways Lab Theatre. You should r ead about John Whiteside Parsons , for real. Like, just open the link and leave the browser window open and read it later in the bathroom, if you have to.

Did you have any big ideas or epiphanies during the final stages of publication, or post-publication, that you kind of wish had made it into the finished product? It could still happen, I suppose. I wanted the book to play by most of the rules as a literary thriller, and for most of the metafictional elements to function as Easter eggs—as the gamer kids say—for readers who catch the references. Krauss, a fairly theory-heavy book about visual art that really rearranged my thinking on a bunch of stuff. Moby-Dick was also something I was thinking about a lot; the hugeness of its conceptual universe was weirdly reassuring to me.

I reread quite a bit of Shakespeare to figure out how to approach the language in the sections, and his rhythms and constructions crept in as a result. None of that is noir, or detective fiction, obviously. The portions of the novel that are the most directly influenced by that kind of material are actually the Los Angeles sections, even though those are the parts that fit least obviously in a genre box.

At the time I was like: And while we were disappointed not to win, that feeling was tempered by the privilege of being in such great company, with two wonderful authors. Martin's book is a big book that's still very light on its feet--a compelling and thought-provoking work that calls to mind both Thomas Pynchon and Raymond Chandler as it takes readers through three iterations of Venice: Each version of Venice in the story is drawn very fully and presumably accurately, and I think in one interview you mentioned having visited the original Venice prior to having the idea for the book.

How many times did you end up visiting each one? Prior to starting The Mirror Thief in , I had been to Venice—the original Venice—once, for a couple of days, while doing the typical middle-class post-collegiate backpacking-through- Europe thing. I had been to Las Vegas a couple of times. Your author bio is refreshingly devoid of some of the normal small publication credits one often sees in author bios, and even devoid of a normal author-type teaching job. Do you feel like writers write better with a non-writing day job?

Product description

Eliot being one prime example. The credit for it goes entirely to the good folks at my publisher, Melville House, who in their wisdom decided that brevity was the best approach. Left to my own devices, I avoid brevity at all costs. The Mirror Thief is his first novel. It seems to me that most writers need a certain quantity of time, brainspace, and security to produce what they want to produce; any place they can find those things is probably an okay place to be.

The trouble is that such circumstances seem to have become increasingly difficult to achieve, both inside and outside the academy. The pace of the workday of an average insurance executive, for instance, is almost certainly more hectic now than it was when Wallace Stevens was vice-president of Hartford Accident and Indemnity; meanwhile, as universities rely more and more on adjunct faculty who often have to teach a horrifying number of classes at a preposterous number of institutions to earn enough to make rent , academic careers have become less and less of a compelling option for writers.

As someone who profoundly dreaded the prospect of a Trump presidency, and voted albeit reluctantly for Hillary, I wanted to write a concession of sorts. I wish Donald Trump well.

Navigation menu

So I have to swallow my pride and wish him a presidency that is somehow good for America. Why did you think Hillary would be a successful candidate? Why, why, why, why, why? All of these fantasies about her winning in a blowout were always just fantasies—plenty of Americans made their mind up about her 24 years ago, and nobody really likes to change their mind, especially when someone else tells them they have to.

Nobody who disliked her ever got a truly convincing reason to change their mind. That's like the Republicans nominating Romney to fight Obamacare. No politicians really win by doing that. When Michael Dukakis rode in the tank, it seemed fake; when John Kerry went skeet shooting, it seemed fake. Also, please tone down the identity politics already. There is, particularly in certain Democratic circles, a tendency to see people first and foremost as the sum of their group identities: This is a cancer on the body politic. Yes, everyone notices these things about others, and yes, certain classes of people have been historically disadvantaged, but we want to get away from that!

And the true test of our progress is how quickly we see each other as individuals, as unique human beings, and not as the sum total of their identities. Yes, like all standards, it is impossible to reach, but we have to keep trying. We have to keep trying, for two reasons: And by trying to do so in a democracy, you will have built your own glass ceiling, because there will always be more votes in the majority than there are in the minority.

Neither situation was pleasant. Also, 2 It leads you to assume the worst of whoever opposes you. To do that, you have to assume a certain amount of good faith on their part; you have to acknowledge that, if you were in their shoes, you may well have made the exact same decisions they made. You, too, have condemned yourselves to squeaker elections, to late nights eyeing returns from Florida and Ohio, to elections where you win the Electoral College but lose the popular vote.

Machete Avenue and Tortoise Boy

Because lately you have been far more interested in winning than you have been in actually, you know, governing. By my estimation, the last Republican president who actually governed was Reagan. That is to say, he had a set of ideals that he thought were best, and he sought to win, but he also sought to be a little above the fray afterwards, because he knew he was the president of all Americans, not just of the ones who voted for him.

He never would have shut down the government out of sheer spite. You impeached a man for lying about consensual sex, only to go on and elect a man who may well be a sexual predator. In short, Republicans, if you focus solely on winning arguments and elections, while ignoring the fact that you then have to govern the losers, you will end up destroying yourselves with your hollow victories. Both of them sought fairer and more straightforward taxation—and both were shot down early. Markets work well, to a point; personal responsibility is great, to a point.

Because there will always, always, always be at least some people who are operating in bad faith, who are only too happy to use wealth and power and privilege simply to amass more wealth and power and privilege. Throughout his business career, and on the campaign trail, Donald Trump showed signs of being a bully. To his credit, Trump showed signs of that in his victory speech ; for as much as I dreaded seeing him up there, I had to admit he looked somewhat presidential. The presidency, as Obama mentioned in his absolutely stellar remarks yesterday, is bigger than any person, and bigger than any ego.

There are, certainly, reasons to be truly pessimistic about this election: And there are reasons to be cynical. But there are reasons to be truly optimistic: We need to keep an eye on him, yes, but we must at least allow him a chance to grow into his role. We cannot afford to wait two years, or four years, to be happy—especially since we will then be paranoid about losing our gains in yet another two or four years.

We need to learn to be happy now. In case you haven't noticed, we've done a makeover of the ol' Tortoise store! Just enter promo code BULK at checkout. And did we mention shipping's free? Gint's book is set in 20th century Cicero; it's as intricate and psychologically compelling as a 19th century Russian novel, but it reads as briskly as anything you'll find in 21st century America. It's been quite an odyssey for Gint and his story; he was gracious enough to post some kind words for us on his blog.

We are, of course, thrilled to be nominated; there are many fine and noteworthy authors in the running, and it's nice to be in such company. It's nice as well to get some reassurance that we're doing what we set out to do--publish amazing authors and high-quality books that are as memorable and engaging as any in the industry.

Operation Anthropoid was supposed to be my story. I made my way to Prague in so I could get started on research; I returned in so I could write a screenplay. Hoping to sell said screenplay, I nearly moved to Hollywood that same year with nothing but a U-Haul and my ego. But because movies are big and collaborative, full of parts and difficult to assemble, I opted to novelize it instead; I was an underemployed waiter with plentiful free time, which I spent researching and writing, listening to Radiohead and Joanna Newsom in libraries and coffee shops as I crafted my opus, my way.

I nearly went broke going to Prague a third time for still more research; I nearly went crazy trying to land an agent and a book deal. In , facing imminent marriage and fatherhood, I Kickstarted the project out into the world. Obligatory slightly-bitchy and passive-aggressive Amazon review here. In short, I started Tortoise Books in no small part to launch Resistance. Obligatory buy-my-book link here.

I might have been able to tell the story better—but not in two hours. We want the killing of a bad man to be a good thing; we want to resist evil and feel good. Most people prefer the human-like to the human, not only in their villains, but in their protagonists. Anthropoid focuses relentlessly, and almost claustrophobically, on the realness of its protagonists, on their doubts and fears and troubles; it focuses on them every bit as tightly as they focused on their mission.

They accomplished their mission despite the odds, and in such catastrophic fashion, that neither they nor the people who knew them were able to tell their full story when it was all said and done.

We know what they did; we only have the barest outlines of who they were. Is it right to tell a story about a real historical figure without knowing all that much about them? If anything, Ellis punched up the drama of those months about as well as he could have without straying into grotesque historical inaccuracy. And for my money, Ellis found plenty of tension in that time by sticking to the important struggles. Unlike the comforting and easily-forgettable summer popcorn fare, this movie leans more towards the Saving Private Ryan territory and even goes beyond by asking an important and unanswerable question: Is it a different take on the story than mine?

Yes—I saw it as an epic, a way to hit all the touchpoints of early 20 th -century history. For me, this Second World War drama makes the most sense when you see how miraculously Czechoslovakia won its independence during the First; their first president accomplished something truly Promethean, and their second was cursed to have to try and recreate the feat.

A side episode to Operation Anthropoid—the attempted bombing of the Skoda Works—was as futile and bitterly comic as anything in Catch If anybody wants to make a streaming series, on the other hand…I digress. It's a fun and whimsical piece by the very talented Long Island-based artist Alison Seiffer. It's a pretty great listen, but we're probably a little biased, because we're, you know, selling books and all.

Still, check it out. We had a cool launch party on the 25th at Volumes Bookcafe in Wicker Park There's a range of neat pieces from a host of new authors, and we're very grateful to our editorial associate, Leanna Gruhn, for helping pull it all together. Check it out here. And now for a relatively timely review Radiohead's A Moon Shaped Pool.

As part of our incredibly intermittent effort to post reviews of things that have been reviewed many, many, many times before, here's our take on The Bridge On The River Kwai. Written by Tortoise Books On September 10, Ninety-Seven to Three, Poetry is a tough racket. In Lieu of Flowers, The Pleasure You Suffer, Written by Tortoise Books On March 13, July 4, I met a local author named Joe Peterson a few years ago at an author event here in Chicago. Written by Tortoise Books On October 7, More announcements to come! Written by Tortoise Books On September 29, Written by Tortoise Books On May 23, Written by Tortoise Books On May 19, You should read his other stuff in the meantime.

Written by Tortoise Books On May 15, Written by Tortoise Books On February 24, Written by Tortoise Books On February 6,

• Dragon de Wawel : Edition bilingue français-polonais (French Edition)
• Accidentally on Purpose
• Jonah Carney
• So You Want To Do Cardio...Now What? Step-by-Step Instructions & Essential Info That Truly Simplify How to Do Cardio, Including Sample Workouts! (The Now What? Fitness Series Book 2)
• Saurus Street 3: The Very Naughty Velociraptor