Frazz by Jef Mallett follows the adventures of an unexpected role model: an elementary-school janitor who's also a Renaissance man. While he's sweeping the hall, he's whistling Beethoven. Or Lyle Lovett. He paints the woodwork in the classrooms; he paints a Da Vinci on the cafeteria wall. He's a trusted authority figure who is every kid's buddy. He took the janitor's job while he was a struggling songwriter, and when he finally sold a hit song, he decided to stay on at school. Frazz appears in 200 newspapers worldwide, including the Los Angeles Times, Seattle Times, Chicago Tribune and Detroit News. "A few years back, I wrote and illustrated a children's book," says Mallett. "When I was traveling around reading it at school assemblies, I noticed that often, the most respected, best-liked grown-up in the building was the janitor. And I thought, 'Hmm, there's a comic strip in that.'" Often praised for its intelligent wit, gentle spirit and effortless diversity, Frazz won a Wilbur Award from the Religion Communicators Council in 2003 and 2005 for excellence in communicating values and ethics.
© Jef Mallett - All Rights Reserved.
Frank & Ernest by Thaves
Fred Basset by Alex Graham
Comments (26) (Please sign in to comment)
annieb1012 said, 4 months ago
I have the condensed (not abridged) OED in two volumes, and it is weighty! I’d hate to have it come down on me.
Agent54 said, 4 months ago
I have a Kindle with dozens of books on it but it never gets any heavier. Not certain if I could use it on a mouse or not.
annieb1012 said, 4 months ago
Well, you could, obviously, but the results might not be as satisfactory as you might have hoped. Dozens of books meeting their demise along with the mouse…hmmm…the cost-to-benefit ratio seems a bit high.
annieb1012 said, 4 months ago
And what if your first blow missed the mouse? Dozens of books would meet their demise while sparing the mouse!
Pacopuddy said, 4 months ago
@
I saw that – it put me off getting stuff for my kindle. However, I can’t understand that it is only ‘leased’, when it distinctly says ‘to PURCHASE this item click on etc’.
It’s a bloomin’ con if you ask me.
Agent54 said, 4 months ago
Just last week I downloaded to my Kindle 40 books. All free. Some technical stuff, some SF and Mystery, 2 joke books. Many of the SF and mystery I may just delete as poorly written – but for free who cares. Nothing lost but a few minutes of research time looking at the lists.
masterskrain said, 4 months ago
What’s a “Kindle”?
J Ba said, 4 months ago
@
Calm down everybody, on Oct 24th (two days after the article) she had her account etc restored:
http://www.reghardware.com/2012/10/24/amazon_unwipes_previously_wiped_kindle/
As with any electronic file, making backups is a good practice. Using a HDD enclosure to kill spiders is not a good idea, but neither is using a big book!
emjaycee said, 4 months ago
@masterskrain
A brand of eReader (electronic book), available as a flat computer pad, but also available as an app for iPhone and Droid phones. A competing brand from Barnes & Noble booksellers is the “nook” (as is book nook, an alcove for reading).
masterskrain said, 4 months ago
@emjaycee
Oh. More high-tech crap to deal with.
Well, I still prefer my books to be paper and print!
REALLY hard for a good book to crash that way!
And before anyone complains…Yes, I am on a lap-top, but I only use it for communication, and reading the news and the comics, as well as a replacement for my typewriter.
My cellphone will only text if you hit each number several times, and I have no idea how to do it anyway, and I don’t know if it will even take a picture, and even if it does, I have no idea how to get them out of the phone to somewhere that I could actually see them.
Yup, I’m a low-tech guy, and I like it that way!
Alexikakos said, 4 months ago
@J Ba
Linn Nygaard may have gotten her account back due soley to the bad publicity Amazon received.
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Amazon offered no apology, they offered no proper explanation of why it was done in the first place, they offered no assurances that they were changing their policies or their attitude toward customers.
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Nor, since Ms, Nygaard’s problems occured about 3 years after this ,
.
.http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/07/25/kindle_conundrum/
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,does it seem likely to.
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Amazon does have a point in that it cannot allow copyrighted material to be indiscriminately spread about, but there are ways of making electronic copying as difficult as it would be for anyone to re-type the entire works of Shakespearre and give them to a friend rather than lending him the book, or in this case, the Kindle.
rshive said, 4 months ago
Well, I got a Kindle over Christmas. Took a while to learn how to use it. Still not completely sure. I tend to be low tech as well. But the e-books have some things on their side too. The uniform size for one. And, as the library pointed out, never an overdue fee. Its e-book section disables each book at precisely the due time—even if you’re in the middle of reading. ’Course then you have to renew the thing; which may or may not be easy. Things may change in the future. but for now, I find myself leaning more to e-books than to physical ones.
puddleglum1066 said, 4 months ago
Kindles (and other e-book readers, including the e-reader apps for smartphones and netbooks) are just fine for library books, which you’re going to read once and return anyway. Heck, the ability to borrow an e-book without driving to the library will probably save enough gas in a year to pay for the device.
It’s another matter if you’re planning to actually buy the book. A print book has an open-ended license; you can read it as many times as you like, lend it to friends, pass it around the neighborhood, and even re-sell it at a garage sale or used book store. An e-book has a much more restrictive license (particularly as regards sharing and re-selling), and it’s still up in the air whether the typical e-book price is enough lower than that of a print book to offset the reduced value.
androgenoide said, 4 months ago
To my mind the strongest argument against proprietary readers is the astonishing number of free texts on the web in non-proprietary formats (pdf, ascii text files, html etc). A couple times in the past month I’ve found full text online of a book more quickly than I could have found it on my (many) bookshelves.
There are a number of other reasons why I think a netbook/laptop would be a significantly better investment than a reader but that one is hard to argue.
jessegooddoggy said, 4 months ago
@masterskrain
I plan to die without ever texting. And I really like holding a book in my hands. My apple laptop is as high tech as I need to be, and yes, I AM OLD!