Despite the occasionally awkward rhythm of the text, mixing things up, as in John Lawrence's "This Little Chick," makes learning animal sounds considerably more entertaining.
The text mixes clear-headed and often trenchant explication of sometimes arcane philosophical ideas, pungent writing ("To be disillusioned one needs first to have been illusioned") with wordy awkwardness ("Schopenhauer argued that it is this that is the...".) and amusing Britishisms ("snook-cocking exuberance"; the "knockabout larkiness" of Nietzsche's attacks on Wagner).
DePaola's text mixes everyday preschool parlance (" 'We were in the same tree,' said the brown bird") with the more formal language of a Sunday-school lesson ("Glory to God in the highest/And on earth peace to men of good will"), a combination that feels right for this kind of book.
So when sorting words, some texts mix y together with ij, but others, including my two modern dictionaries, don't.
Mayuzumi Toshirō produced many clever eclectic results in such works as his Nirvana Symphony (1958); Buddhist sutra texts mix with a combination of choral writing in the style of Igor Stravinsky, orchestral tone clusters, and sweeping vocal lines derived from Japanese Buddhist chant style.
Take these typical elements: Nonlinear narrative, multimedia, abstraction, fractured language, fourth-wall breaking, colorblind casting, stylized acting, drama-interrupting dance, site-specific settings, confessional performance art, politically incorrect provocation, irreverent updating or deconstruction of classic texts, mixing of high and low culture.
Turn 90 degrees and you find more stills of great texts mixed with hodge-podge boxes of strange tools that recall the intellectual fashions and explorations of the last two centuries.
Perhaps instead of a line of text saying "Mix in two cups of flour", Counter Intelligence will have a pair of elves projected on your counter, apparently tugging at your real bag of flour.
A full showing of this Hugo Boss Prize winner's works that augment conventional photographs with paint, drawings, or hand-written texts, a mix of fact and fiction.
