The story originated with an ongoing prompt word exercise created by the Key West Writers Guild. The snails are original residents of Key West, and their adventures take them all over an island that advertises itself as home to One Human Family.
It is an adult and mature young adult illustrated love story, a bedtime story, in the form of a prose poem. The language is sophisticated, educative, humorous, and subtly nuanced, highlighting the ups and downs of a snail’s life cycle and whimsically touching upon the universality of human relationships and emotions. Snails are endemically hermaphroditic, responding to the demands of nature and are reflected in the return-to-storyline.
The Ukrainian born, and trained, Toronto resident Olha Tkachenko’s illustrations surround the beautiful language with a brilliant light. The Ridiculous Horny Snail is a delightful coffee table, talk-about book of life told through art and poetry.
This newly released book opens with a Storyteller’s Note how the author brought life to the words, and it ends with an explanation of The Ridiculously Colorful (and totally factual) Life Cycle of Gastropods.
The story originated with an ongoing prompt word exercise created by the Key West Writers Guild. The snails are original residents of Key West, and their adventures take them all over an island that advertises itself as home to One Human Family.
It is an adult and mature young adult illustrated love story, a bedtime story, in the form of a prose poem. The language is sophisticated, educative, humorous, and subtly nuanced, highlighting the ups and downs of a snail’s life cycle and whimsically touching upon the universality of human relationships and emotions. Snails are endemically hermaphroditic, responding to the demands of nature and are reflected in the return-to-storyline.
The Ukrainian born, and trained, Toronto resident Olha Tkachenko’s illustrations surround the beautiful language with a brilliant light. The Ridiculous Horny Snail is a delightful coffee table, talk-about book of life told through art and poetry.
This newly released book opens with a Storyteller’s Note how the author brought life to the words, and it ends with an explanation of The Ridiculously Colorful (and totally factual) Life Cycle of Gastropods.
At first glance, one could be forgiven for believing that The Ridiculous Horny Snail: An Ode in Two Acts by Judi D. Walters was a children’s picture book. With its bright, cute little cover displaying a crayon-like drawing of two cartoon snails staring into the sunset as they perch on a bed of leaves, it is an attractive vision. These images and the illustrative technique continue throughout the book, and for the most part, the pages are reminiscent of a children’s story because they contain so few sentences. That said, these sentences are woven with mastery born from a simple writing exercise often conducted at the author’s local writing group.
Taking inspiration from one of the places the author calls home, they have embarked on a challenge to weave a collection of words into the narrative. Walters challenges the reader to see if they can find the following words, going as far as to offer hints to where they would be:
Act I: escargot, pheromones (a chemical secretion affecting the behavior of another animal of the same species), ridiculous, concatenate (linking), spiral, mimosa. scoundrel, salsa, bight, anonymous, sex, tintinnabulation (ringing of bells), music, manic, salutatory (kindness), kiss, obituary.
Act II: tingly, invisible, iguana, calculating, therapist, bougainvillea, naked, truth, madness, icy, vesper (evening star), sandstone, scrumptious, crepuscular (twilight), museum, gold.
The book is a short, succinct story of a long courtship between a couple that assumed they had more time. I like how the book included cheeky phrasing that only an older audience would comprehend. It’s a bit like watching Shrek with the kids and the wonderfully vibrant animations but the innuendos only you laugh at, whilst the children look at you quizzically. I also love how it included phrases as well as the literal translation of the occasional quip in the language of love, that’s French to us ordinary folk. The facts about gastropods at the end are just a bonus and shares some less common knowledge.
The book is an extremely quick read and probably appreciated by readers of short stories, flash fiction and graphic novel fans. It is a niche book, so it is likely to find a slim audience, but recommendations from me would be highly dependent on the price. Although highly decorative, at less than 20 pages of actual story, I’m not sure I could justify the expense and would probably seek to read it at the library.
The pictures support the text well and are each detailed, double page spreads that add clarity to the words they surround. If I had to name one peeve, it would be the font selected for the text. The letters were as quirky as the story, but they did sometimes trip me up and make me double-check spellings. The book would also suit caregivers of pre-reading age children as they can read text aimed at them, whilst the child reads the pictures and creates their own adventure from them.Â