Egg Syntax

a review of

Anarchy in the Age of Dinosaurs by the Curious George Brigade, Mosinee, WI, 2003, 154 pp, $6. See pages 63–64 to order.

For a few years, the CrimethInc. collective has been willfully monkeying around with our assumptions about anarchism. Most recently, the CrimethInc. mantle has been taken up by a collective calling itself the Curious George Brigade. With Anarchy in the Age of Dinosaurs (AAD), the Brigade romps on the jungle gym of anarchism with an innocence both inspiring and exasperating.

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We’re certain that most anarchists can remember at least one book that first introduced them to anti-authoritarianism, political engagement, gender-role-bending, or other topics of lasting importance. But such books are hard to find amid the morass of boring, mainstream kid-lit that reinforces the same capitalist and authoritarian values which are fed to adults (can you say “Disney”?). Here, then, we present a highly subjective and idiosyncratic guide to some of the best work out there. Undoubtedly, we’ve left off your favorite author; we’re sorry, and we meant to check with you before we wrote this, but there are thousands of great children’s books out there, and our guide could easily have taken up the whole of this issue if we’d let it. Our selection is ordered, loosely, by age of target reader.

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a review of

Recipes For Disaster, CrimethInc. Ex-Workers’ Collective, Olympia WA 624 pages $12.00. Available from the Barn: see page 98

It seemed that every time we dropped by Bound Together Books in San Francisco, the same situation unfolded. Some teenager getting the punk rock starter kit together (first mohawk, chain wallet, and Doc Marten’s bought with the parents’ credit card) would show up looking for The Anarchist Cookbook. The counterperson, with a weary sigh, would place on the counter a worn copy of the dubious classic and open to a dog-eared page. “See this bomb recipe?” she/he would say. “You’ll blow yourself up if you do what this book says. That’s not what anarchism is about.” The kid would leave clutching a couple of cheap pamphlets on Kropotkin, never to be seen again.

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