Leonard Loves Muppets

It's true!  And just to prove how true it is, I read a book about Mupppets.  More than that, I reviewed said book.  Check it out:

Memoirs of a Muppets Writer: by Joseph A. Bailey
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I absolutely adored this book. For anyone who loves the Muppets, this is a must-read. Bailey's stories are not only chock-full of insider Muppet information and behind-the-scenes stories, but he also gives some of the nitty gritty, like how Sesame Street writers were told which educational goals to use, that Muppets are built on a scale of three's (1/3 head, 2/3 body). The stories are funny, touching, sad, and incredibly useful as Bailey also includes very practical advice for writers of any genre.

So why did I give this only four stars instead of five? TYPOS. Seriously, whomever is the editor for Walnut Press should be fired. This had some of the strangest, most misguided use of punctuation I've seen in some time (and I teach college students!). Also the font size occasionally changes from one paragraph to the next, and the text uses both quotation marks and italics with no rhyme or reason (is it dialogue? Internal dialogue? Adding emphasis?). All in all, very distracting; I would expect more from a man who included a section on the importance of grammar in writing.

The only other detractor (besides the glaring, distracting typos) is the rather disjointed narrative. Bailey jumps back and forth in time, and it can occasionally be confusing to the reader where we are in his career timeline with Jim Henson Productions.

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