Penguin Soup for the Soul: A Novel

Tom Tomorrow (the pen name of Dan Perkins) won the 1998 Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award for Cartooning, but if Bobby were alive, he'd probably be furious with him. Though Tom Tomorrow's scathingly entertaining This Modern World cartoon leans hard to the left, the entire political spectrum is its shooting gallery. He's capable of skewering Newt Gingrich, Clinton ("a spineless, amoral opportunist" depicted as a worm), Reagan, Nixon, and Vlad the Impaler in a single hilarious strip. With the longest (and arguably the wittiest) word balloons in the business and a gratuitously sarcastic cartoon penguin named Sparky, Tom Tomorrow nails them all: Alan Greenspan, Abraham Lincoln, Sam Donaldson, even Mother Teresa! ("She DID befriend such noted champions of the poor as 'Baby Doc' Duvalier and Charles Keating--the latter of whom gave her more than a million dollars in cash....") Tom Tomorrow may be the most effective liberal editorialist in America. He also pays homage to other cartoonists when appropriate: clueless young right-wingers at a college conference honoring Oliver North get depicted as the kids from The Family Circus; there's a so-so pastiche of Little Nemo in Slumberland; and the Dr. Seuss parody is a hoot. "Did you grope her in your house? Did you grope beneath her blouse?" demands Starr-I-Are. "I do not like you Starr-You-Are. I think that you have gone too far! I will not answer any more--perhaps I will go start a war!" Anyone who liked Rush Limbaugh Is a Big Fat Idiot should get this book. --Tim Appelo