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• The Alphabet Thief Groundwood Books (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 2017
• The First Little Bastard to Call Me Gramps: Poems of the Late Middle Ages House of Anansi Press (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 2015

1. The alphabet thief LCCN 2017296851 Type of material Book Personal name Richardson, Bill, 1955- author. Main title The alphabet thief / Bill Richardson ; pictures by Roxanna Bikadoroff. Published/Produced Toronto ; Berkeley : Groundwood Books, House of Anansi Press, [2017] ©2017 Description 1 volume (unpaged) : color illustrations ; 20 cm ISBN 9781554988778 (hardback) 1554988772 (hardback) CALL NUMBER PZ8.3.R394 Al 2017 CABIN BRANCH Copy 1 Request in Jefferson or Adams Building Reading Rooms - STORED OFFSITE 2. The first little bastard to call me Gramps : poems of the late middle ages LCCN 2015944675 Type of material Book Personal name Richardson, Bill, 1955- author. Main title The first little bastard to call me Gramps : poems of the late middle ages / Bill Richardson ; illuminated by Roxanna Bikadoroff. Published/Produced Toronto, ON : Anansi, 2015. ©2015 Description 114 pages : illustrations ; 19 cm ISBN 9781487000547 (bound) 1487000545 (bound) CALL NUMBER PR9199.3.R467 F57 2015 CABIN BRANCH Copy 1 Request in Jefferson or Adams Building Reading Rooms - STORED OFFSITE

• The Bunny Band - 2018 Groundwood Books, Toronto, Ontario, Canada

• Wikipedia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Richardson_(radio)

  Bill Richardson (radio)
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  For other people named Bill or William Richardson, see William Richardson (disambiguation).
  Bill Richardson (born 1955 in Winnipeg, Manitoba) is a Canadian radio broadcaster and author.

  Richardson received his B.A. from the University of Winnipeg in 1976. After spending a year in Montpellier, he moved to Vancouver, where he completed a Master of Library Science at the University of British Columbia. He received an honorary doctorate from Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ontario, June 2017.[1]

  He has been a broadcaster on CBC Radio One, beginning in 1992 as a regular contributor and guest host on Vicki Gabereau's show. When Gabereau left to host a television show on CTV, Richardson moved over to CBC Radio Two to host As You Like It, a classical music request show. In 1997 he returned to CBC Radio One to become host of Richardson's Roundup.

  He began hosting a new show, Bunny Watson, in 2004, and was replaced as host of The Roundup by Tetsuro Shigematsu. During the CBC staff lockout of 2005, he noted in the CBC Unplugged staff podcast that he has spent his entire time as a CBC host on contract, rather than as a permanent employee. CBC's labour troubles resulted in his return to the air via reruns of The Roundup. He was also a frequent guest host of Sounds Like Canada, moderated CBC's annual Canada Reads from 2003 to 2007, and was the host of Saturday Afternoon at the Opera and Sunday Afternoon in Concert until 2013.

  Richardson's book Bachelor Brothers' Bed and Breakfast won the Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour in 1994.

  Richardson now makes regular appearances on the Knowledge Network for its fundraising.

  He is currently working on a musical based on Craigslist ads entitled do you want what I have got? a Craigslist Cantata with Veda Hille and Amiel Gladstone.

  Bibliography
  Canada Customs: Droll Recollections, Musings and Quibbles (1988) ISBN 0-921304-01-3
  Queen of all the dustballs: and other epics of everyday life (1990) ISBN 0-919591-98-1
  Come into my parlour: cautionary verses and instructive tales for the new millennium (1994) ISBN 0-919591-85-X
  Guy to Goddess: An Intimate Look at Drag Queens (1994) ISBN 0-89815-645-9
  Bachelor Brothers' Bed and Breakfast (1993) ISBN 1-55054-112-9
  Bachelor Brothers Bed & Breakfast Pillow Book (1995) ISBN 1-55054-439-X
  Bachelor Brothers' bedside companion (1996) ISBN 1-55054-517-5
  Scorned and beloved: dead of winter meetings with Canadian eccentrics (1997) ISBN 0-676-97079-6
  Oddball@large (1998) ISBN 1-55054-626-0
  Great Canadian books of the century: Vancouver Public Library (1999) ISBN 1-55054-736-4
  After Hamelin (2000) ISBN 1-55037-629-2
  Waiting for Gertrude: A Graveyard Gothic (2001) ISBN 1-55054-892-1
  Dear Sad Goat: a roundup of truly Canadian tales & letters (2002) ISBN 1-55054-960-X
  Sally Dog Little (2002) ISBN 1-55037-759-0
  But If They Do (2003) ISBN 1-55037-787-6
  Sally Dog Little Undercover Agent (2003) ISBN 1-55037-825-2
  (foreword by Bill Richardson) Character parts: who's really who in CanLit (2003) ISBN 0-676-97578-X
  Old Father William's Well-Ordered Universe (2008) ISBN 978-1-55468-024-5

Bill Richardson
Peter Dickinson (Simon Fraser University.)
Born: August 11, 1955 in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada
Nationality: Canadian
Occupation: Radio host
Canadian Literary Humorists. Ed. Paul Matthew St. Pierre. Dictionary of Literary Biography Vol. 362. Detroit: Gale, 2011. From Literature Resource Center.
Full Text: COPYRIGHT 2011 Gale, Cengage Learning
Table of Contents

WORKS:
WRITINGS BY THE AUTHOR:
BOOKS
Canada Customs: Droll Recollections, Musings and Quibbles (Vancouver: Brighouse, 1988).
Queen of All the Dustballs and Other Epics of Everyday Life (Vancouver: Polestar, 1992).
Bachelor Brothers' Bed & Breakfast (Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre, 1993; New York: Wyatt Book for St. Martin's Press, 1996).
Come into My Parlour: Cautionary Verses and Instructive Tales for the New Millennium (Vancouver: Polestar, 1994).
Guy to Goddess: An Intimate Look at Drag Queens, photo-graphs by Rosamond Norbury (Vancouver: Whitecap, 1994).
Bachelor Brothers' Bed & Breakfast Pillow Book (Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre, 1995; New York: Wyatt Book for St. Martin's Press, 1997).
Bachelor Brothers' Bedside Companion (Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre, 1996).
Truth Be Told: Coming out as a Writer (Regina: Saskatchewan Library Association, 1996).
Scorned & Beloved: Dead of Winter Meetings with Canadian Eccentrics (Toronto: Knopf Canada, 1997).
Oddball@large (Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre, 1998).
After Hamelin (Toronto & New York: Annick Press, 2000).
Waiting for Gertrude: A Graveyard Gothic (Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre, 2001; New York: Thomas Dunne, 2003).
Dear Sad Goat: A Roundup of Truly Canadian Tales & Letters (Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre, 2002).
Sally Dog Little (Toronto: Annick Press, 2002).
Sally Dog Little, Undercover Agent (Toronto: Annick Press, 2003).
But If They Do (Toronto: Annick Press, 2003).
The Aunts Come Marching (Vancouver: Raincoast, 2007).
Old Father William's Well-Ordered Universe: A Generally Reliable Compendium of Facts, Figures, and Formulae, Specifically Intended for the Bathroom Bound (and Those Who Love Them) (Toronto: Collins, 2008).

BIOGRAPHICAL ESSAY:
Although he has been compared to author and radio personality Garrison Keillor and poet Ogden Nash , it is perhaps more appropriate to think of Bill Richardson as Canada's kinder, gentler version of David Sedaris. Like the American writer, Richardson is known for his droll reflections in prose and in verse on the trials and tribulations of everyday life; for comic portraits of larger-than-life family members, eccentric friends, mischievous pets, petulant boyfriends, and addled strangers; for endless witty parsings of European versus North American social customs (both writers are avowed Francophiles); and, above all, for making himself and his own foibles the main source of his self-deprecating humor. Another important connection between the two authors that additionally links both to Keillor is the role radio has played in fostering and sustaining their writing careers and in helping to shape their comic voices. Sedaris came to national prominence in the United States when he was invited by Ira Glass to read from his "SantaLand Diaries" on National Public Radio in 1992, and he regularly tests new work on Glass's This American Life. Richardson had gotten his start a few years earlier contributing occasional pieces and bits of doggerel, many of which were collected in his first published book, to the Vancouver-based Gabereau show on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) Radio One affiliates; he eventually became the host of a series of popular music and talk shows. Finally, the camp irony that underscores both Richardson's and Sedaris's writing reflects a wry disposition that allows them to excavate and celebrate the comic depravity that lurks beneath the surface of placid domesticity. If Richardson is slightly less depraved than Sedaris in his subject matter, not as outsized or hyperbolic in his style, this has less to do with any defining differences in national temperament than with a shift in the generic approach of each writer to the essential agon of comedy: the struggle against social convention. Richardson is Plautus to Sedaris's Aristophanes.

Richardson's popularity as a writer is matched by his productivity and his formal versatility. Over the course of two decades he has written, edited, or contributed to no fewer than seventeen books, spanning nonfiction, personal essays, poetry, novels, picture books, photographic essays, and children's and young-adult literature. All are marked by his characteristic elevation of the quotidian into the stuff of epic comedy. A burst fish tank occasions a nostalgic excursus through soggy cookbooks and a youth lost to fad diets and changing gastronomical tastes. A battle between a man, his vacuum cleaner, and a giant dustball is likened to David slaying Goliath and Beowulf defeating Grendel. And, most famously, in Richardson's best-selling first novel, Bachelor Brothers' Bed & Breakfast (1993)--winner of the Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal for Humour in 1994--the visitors' book at the Gulf Island establishment operated by fraternal twins Hector and Virgil prompts prolonged meditations, equal parts soulful self-examination and social rumination, on the part of each of their highly colorful guests. But unlike Alexander Pope , whose heroic rhyming couplets he is often wont to imitate--a poem titled "The Rape of the Locks," about male pattern baldness, appears in Queen of All the Dustballs and Other Epics of Everyday Life (1992)--Richardson does not stand at a mocking distance from his comic subjects or sit in bemused judgment of them. Indeed, what most distinguishes Richardson's humor is its profound empathy. Whether he is writing about fictional twin-brother hoteliers and their strange ménage or real-life female impersonators and their unique argot in Guy to Goddess: An Intimate Look at Drag Queens (1994), or collecting and recounting anecdotes about his own absurd behavior alongside that of some of his radio listeners, the self-described "oddball" Richardson is always laughing with rather than at his comic characters.

William James Richardson was born in Winnipeg, Manitoba, on 11 August 1955 to Robert Richardson, a trust officer, and Margaret Redding Richardson, an insurance worker. The shyest and most bookish of three brothers, Richardson has said that his reading habits were formed at a young age by his parents, with his mother purchasing for him a six-volume anthology called Our Bookhouse, a compendium of readings from many sources, and with his father regularly reciting poetry to him from Lewis Carroll 's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865), Robert Louis Stevenson 's A Child's Garden of Verses (1885), and the works of A. A. Milne . After graduating from high school at Silver Heights Collegiate, Richardson earned a B.A. in French from the University of Winnipeg in 1976. Following a year of study in Montpellier, France, and travel throughout Europe, he completed a master of library science degree at the University of British Columbia in 1980. He then worked for several years as a children's librarian. In the early 1980s he began hosting The Coming Out Show, one of the first gay-and-lesbian-themed programs on public radio in Canada, on Vancouver's fledgling Co-Op Radio. Richardson's openness about and self-mockingly garrulous discussions of his own homosexuality have become hallmarks--without being defining characteristics--of his work as a broadcaster and as a writer.

In 1984 Richardson became a researcher for Vicki Gabereau's talk show on CBC Radio One, eventually graduating to regular contributor and guest host. Many of the pieces in his first book, Canada Customs: Droll Recollections, Musings and Quibbles (1988), betray their radio origins: they are short and snappy; they proffer opinions on a variety of topical subjects grand and small, from the North American Free Trade Agreement and acid rain to computerized parking meters and love handles, with an equal lightness of tone; they embrace cheap sentiment (Valentine's Day odes, memories of youthful games) without trying to earn cheap laughs; and they insistently attempt to include the reader through various means of direct address.

The occasional pieces and sketches in Canada Customs also offer glimpses of the distinctive comic narrative voice Richardson developed in his later fiction, especially his gift for creating memorably eccentric characters. "Loonette," for example, introduces the precocious September, a wise-beyond-her-years nine-year-old entrepreneur who runs a corner Kool-Aid stand. September quickly sizes up the thirsty narrator, Bill, as an easy mark, and as she plies him with glass after glass of Kool-Aid--seventy-five cents for the first glass, fifty cents for a refill--she recounts how her mother, a professional clown, plans to move the family to California and attend a clown school "run by some guy called Loony Toony who was a big noise in the sixties." September, who plans to change her name when she turns eighteen, heaps derision on the idea. At the same time, she is sanguine about the opportunities the move will afford her to expand her business in "health--conscious" and technology-oriented Silicon Valley. Equally memorable is Bill's Uncle Gus, who in a succession of stories writes letters from Winnipeg filled with a mix of avuncular advice, family lore, and small-town gossip. The epistolary conceit, combined with Bill's first-person framing of the arrival of each missive and the third-person commentary of postwoman Shelley, foreshadow the adept mixing of comic voices and points of view that Richardson exploited to maximum fictional effect in Bachelor Brothers' Bed & Breakfast five years later.

In 1992 Richardson became the host of Crosswords, the summer replacement for Gabereau. Long before the federal government created the official post of poet laureate in 2002, Richardson decided to assume the mantle himself. He broadcast occasional and often instructional verse on an array of everyday topics, such as personal ablutions, cleaning up after one's pets, and removing dryer lint, that were suggested by his listeners. Some of these poems are collected in his second book, Queen of All the Dustballs and Other Epics of Everyday Life, that features a pseudo-introduction by the fictional Ramona Clay. A registered nurse with an aversion to literature, Ramona says that she met Richardson when he came to the emergency room of her hospital with the crevice--tool attachment from his vacuum cleaner suctioned to his forehead. He had been seeking inspiration for a rhyme to go along with "dustballs" in the title poem--his chef d'oeuvre, as he characterizes it to Ramona. Equally fascinated and appalled by Richardson's story, Ramona writes that she ended up having her own poetic epiphany and supplied the poet with the missing rhyme: "must call." The first of Richardson's comic avatars, Ramona shares with her successors the guileless passion of the recently converted and deeply committed bibliophile.

Employing rhyming lines of irregular length and meter and incorporating all manner of references to popular consumer culture, Richardson's poetry is satirical and often scatological, as in a rumination on how the telephone always manages to ring when one is in the bathroom:

Action and reaction. It's a simple minded notion:
The pulling of the moon engenders tides within the ocean,
The shining of the sun produces melting of the snow:
"Alright, alright," I hear you cry, "We know! We know! We know!"
I know that this is obvious and that is why you're terse.
But there's another force at work throughout the universe
That uses this same principle. I'll brook no rude rebuttal
In telling you this self-same force is cunning, sly, and subtle.
I've seen it time and time again. Each time it makes me madder:
The phone will opt to ring when I decide to drain my bladder.
It makes me want to shout and scream, to ululate and howl
The way it tintinnabulates each time I move my bowels.
It's so perverse. It's so bizarre. Whatever can I do
To understand how phones are linked to number one and two?
Richardson's two most famous comic characters were introduced on the radio before they first appeared in print in his best-known work, Bachelor Brothers' Bed & Breakfast. The novel centers around unmarried fifty-something fraternal twins Hector and Virgil, who own and operate a bed-and-breakfast on an unnamed island in the Strait of Georgia between the lower mainland of British Columbia and Vancouver Island--a rustic rural retreat that rivals Keillor's fictional Lake Wobegon, Minnesota, in the Canadian cultural consciousness. The brothers opened the inn after the death of their larger-than-life mechanic mother, whose ashes they still keep, in "compliance with her wishes," in "a ziplock bag in the freezer, attending the day we could incorporate them into a household project." Hector and Virgil's mother remains an imposing presence in the twins' lives, and in their alternating dispatches on their establishment, their clientele, and island life they speak of their "matrilineal heritage" often. Of their father, according to the more ruminative Virgil, the brothers know little other than that the books that fill almost every room of their bed-and- breakfast seem to have come from him. A salient feature of the novel and its first sequel is the lists of titles the brothers recommend for when one is feeling low or taking a bath.

Another feature of the work is the excerpts from their guest book, described in the prologue to the novel as "a large scrapbooklike album they call 'Brief Lives,' after [John] Aubrey," and in which they encourage visitors to record much more than names and places of residence. From this book comes the story of Helen from Winnipeg and why she stays with the brothers every January to reread Stevenson's Treasure Island (1883) and that of the lawyer Gordon, whose trauma at getting lost in the woods while on an enforced wilderness retreat is assuaged only by reading through a pile of Hector and Virgil's Hardy Boys books. Many of the "Brief Lives" entries concern guests' encounters with the bed-and-breakfast's resident pets: the rather predatory cat Waffle and the parrot Mrs. Rochester, who intersperses her morning advice with the occasional vulgar epithet, much to the consternation of the visiting Sophy, who already has an aversion to domesticated birds and appreciates the irony of having brought along Julian Barnes 's Flaubert's Parrot (1984) for her stay with the brothers. The book progresses in this self--consciously bibliophilic manner, with the only hint of mystery or drama in its deliberately light plot concerning Virgil's obsession with island poet Solomon Solomon, who wrote reams of bad verse for the local newspaper, the Occasional Rumor, before his death in 1959 and may have been in love with their mother, and Hector's budding romance with Altona Winkler, a no-nonsense cosmetics saleswoman who doubles as a reporter for the paper.

The joys of reading in the bathroom, a favorite topic of Hector and Virgil, are the subject of one of the poems in Come into My Parlour: Cautionary Verses and Instructive Tales for the New Millennium (1994). Ramona Clay has now become the chief interpreter of Richardson's verse; in a one-sided interview with the poet she compares his work to the "mock-didactic" and satirical nursery rhymes of Hilaire Belloc and supplies, in addition to her introduction, brief headnotes to the poems.

In Bachelor Brothers' Bed & Breakfast Pillow Book (1995) the twins' lists of recommended books remain, but the "Brief Lives" entries of the first novel are replaced by recipes, memos, letters, and, above all, clippings and breaking stories from the Occasional Rumor. This technique allows Richardson to retain his trademark mixing of comic voices, juxtaposing Hector and Virgil's alternating musings with the hard-nosed reporting of Altona, who is investigating the cracking of the safe in the brothers' living room, the manuscript discovered inside, and how all of it relates to the death of Solomon Solomon; the recent arrival of Caedmon Harkness, an opera-singing roof thatcher who has taken up the position of the bed-and-breakfast's handyman and hagiographer; and, especially, the brothers' own mysterious paternity. Taking a page from Plautus , whose Menaechmi (The Menaechmus Twins) stands behind the Bachelor Brothers series, Richardson resolves all these questions in a steady and increasingly hilarious buildup of coincidences and revealed familial connections. The book won a 1996 BC Booksellers' Choice Award.

Crossroads ended in 1995, and Richardson became the host of the classical-music request program As You Like It on CBC Radio Two. The final installment in the highly popular Bachelor Brothers series, Bachelor Brothers' Bedside Companion (1996), takes the potpourri construction of the previous two books to its logical extreme. Published as a hardback, large-format picture book with illustrations by Rose Cowles, it is based on the premise that a copy of this very book sits on every nightstand in the guest bedrooms of Hector and Virgil's inn. It is "a gumbo of poems, formulae, letters from guests, trivia, receipts, lists, sundries and notions, charms and incantations: textual relaxant that can be taken in small doses by a reader looking for a minute or two of diversion before surrendering to Morpheus." Observations from Hector and Virgil still abound, but they jockey for space with horoscopes by Altona, who has become a popular romance novelist; Caedmon 's saints-day explications; and extended excerpts from books, many of them Canadian, that are favored by the twins. In addition to being extremely funny, the Bachelor Brothers books provide a fascinating tour of Richardson's wide and eclectic literary tastes.

Richardson turns to nonfiction in Scorned & Beloved: Dead of Winter Meetings with Canadian Eccentrics (1997). His subjects include not only well-known artistic geniuses, such as Glenn Gould and Emily Carr but also far-more-obscure figures. For example, the cross-dresser Sarah Edmonds was born in New Brunswick in 1841 and passed as a boy from early childhood, eventually working as an itinerant Bible salesman named Franklin Thompson before enlisting under the same name in the Second Michigan Infantry during the American Civil War. Perhaps the most fascinating subject is Charles Henry Danielle, the gay costumer, restaurateur, resort owner, and "Professor of the Terpischorean Art," who in 1896 unveiled to the public Octagon Castle, a four-story, eight-sided tower in St. John's, Newfoundland, with wings on three sides and an extravagantly baroque interior, the centerpiece of which was an elaborate coffin adorned with more than seven thousand white satin shells in which Danielle was reputed to sleep. Death shades many of the tales in Scorned and Beloved, and for all the affectionate whimsy with which they are told--including Richardson's account of Nova Scotian Jack Marriott, who kept his euthanized cat Po in his freezer so that they could be buried together--an undercurrent of melancholy runs through them. The book opens with Richardson searching for Gould's grave in Toronto's Mt. Pleasant Cemetery and closes with the murder of the only subject in the book personally known to the author: David Curnick, a gay man and part-time teacher with a passion for all things associated with Robin Hood.

Not just a compendium of Canadian eccentrics, Scorned and Beloved is also a disquisition on the meaning of eccentricity itself. Throughout the book Richardson engages in a dialogue with his predecessors in the field--not least with Edith Sitwell , whose English Eccentrics (1933) is the obvious template for Richardson's book. Like Sitwell's, Richardson's gentle send-up of his countrymen's odd, strange, bizarre, and generally nonconformist ways reveals an identification with his subjects.

When Gabereau left the CBC to host a television show on CTV in 1997, Richardson returned to CBC Radio One as the host of his own talk show, Richardson's Roundup. A compendium of excerpted features and interviews that had been broadcast on other CBC programs during the day, the show also showcased stories and musical requests submitted by listeners. The toll-free number audience members were given to dial with their domestic tales and family anecdotes, 1-888-723-4628, provided the alternative title by which the program came to be known: the last seven digits spell out SAD GOAT. From 1997 to 2000 Richardson also hosted the CBC Television program Booked on Saturday Night, a half-hour literary chat show on which he interviewed more than ninety Canadian and international writers, and he served as guest host on other programs. In 1998 he was awarded an honorary doctorate of laws by his alma mater, the University of Winnipeg, for his contributions to Canadian letters and telecommunications.

Oddball@large (1998) is a collection of essays originally published in newspapers. These "meanderings," as Richardson refers to them in his introduction, are "more inward than outward looking. They were spawned by conversations overheard on public transit; by neighborhood anomalies (a spate of abandoned shopping carts, the mysterious appearance of speed bumps behind a Buddhist temple); by chance encounters with urban wildlife; by the proclivities of pets; and by the vagaries of close relationships and minor family eruptions." In consigning himself to "the roster of the little leagues of literature," Richardson shows that dailiness can be trying, troubling, and mysterious but also extremely funny.

Many of the books Richardson has published beginning in 2000 have been for children. After Hamelin (2000) imagines what happened to the children led away by the Pied Piper of Hamelin by relating the reminiscences of 101-year-old Penelope, who as a little girl was struck deaf the day the Piper appeared in town and so managed to escape the intoxicating lure of his music. Young Penelope is thus tasked with rescuing the other children by journeying in her dreams to the magic land in which they are being held. Along the way, she is joined by a wisecracking cat, a featherless snowbird, and a rope-skipping dragon; after many adventures, this motley crew is able to vanquish the evil Piper and recover the missing children. The book won the Silver Birch Award for Fiction, a prize administered by the Ontario Library Association but chosen by children in grades three through six.

Serialized in the Vancouver weekly The Georgia Straight, where an excerpt titled "It's in the Cards" won a National Magazine Awards Gold Medal for Fiction in 1999, Waiting for Gertrude: A Graveyard Gothic (2001) is Richardson's most ambitious book to date and a tour de force of comic pastiche. The novel imagines that the souls of the famous people buried in Paris's Père-Lachaise Cemetery occupy the bodies of the colony of feral cats that roam the grounds. Oscar Wilde , despite having been neutered by the evil "Spay Queen" Ondine, the only human character in the novel and a firm believer in feline population control, pines after the oversexed and three-testicled tomcat Jim Morrison, who has impregnated Maria Callas, taken up with the yoga-teaching Colette, and has a disturbing tendency to eat kittens. Isadora Duncan has become the mistress of Amedeo Modigliani, and Héloïse and Abelard, a society caterer/lifestyle consultant and publicist, respectively, are reunited as cute kitties in love. Edith Piaf is a laundress who takes great pleasure in airing Père-Lachaise's "dirty laundry, both literally and figuratively. She studies sheets and pronounces on the stains like an Old Testament prophet scanning a spill of sheep gut." The legendary actress Sarah Bernhardt has been reduced to organizing the cemetery's annual Christmas revue. Marcel Proust has reinvented himself as a private investigator, tracking a recent spate of prosthetic thefts, including Bernhardt's wooden leg, Gioachino Rossini's glass eye, and the stone phallus of the angel atop Wilde's tombstone.

The novel revolves around Alice B. Toklas 's attempts to be reunited with her beloved Gertrude Stein . Toklas engages the sorceress Bonne Maman to hasten this reunion by using her occult powers to conjure up Stein's spirit; but someone has absconded with Bonne Maman's Book of Spells, and her attempts at witchcraft have only succeeded in sending her furry friends even further into heat. Toklas's first-person confidences to the reader--her Stein-like rewriting of her autobiography--and her conversations with Père-Lachaise's other inhabitants provide the main structure of the book; but they are interspersed with Wilde's letters to Morrison and Duncan's to Modigliani, delivered by Frédéric Chopin, Père-Lachaise's postmaster general; with the labored iambic pentameter of the poems that introduce each of the main characters, composed by Jean de La Fontaine , the seventeenth-century French fabulist who now works as the cemetery's resident tour guide; questionnaires by Proust on stolen goods; and even the minutes of the meeting of the planning committee of Bernhardt's Annual Renaissance Revue. This technique allows Richardson to display his gift for comic ventriloquism through gentle and affectionate parodies of his subjects' writing styles. For example, Wilde imparts to Toklas the epigram, "Never disparage a surface. Nothing recommends beauty more than superficiality. Real beauty walks through the world uncluttered and unmasked. It doesn't hide in the earth like a truffle, attendant on the tender mercies of a passing pig." Asked how he became a private investigator, Proust replies:

For the longest time I went to bed early. That longest time was a long time ago, but that will never be lost to me nor live outside the possibility of capture, not as long as my spine retains its miraculous elasticity, its willing pliancy; for as long as I am able to touch nose to tail and breathe in the heady perfumes of my own nether quarters, I can be assured that the walls of time's fortress will crumble into dust, without benefit even of rams' horns, and that the phalanxes of foot soldiers conscripted into the past's teeming legions will spill forth, like Greeks from the hollow belly of their cunning horse, but with open arms, intent not on conquering but on embracing the present moment, so that the chasm between then and now, between kitten and tom, will again be breached, and I will inhabit--not only in fantasy but in the hard-coin realm of the literal--those days when bed, just bed, was the sole object, the focus of all my desire.
In this passage and throughout the novel one does not find the "blank parody," empty of content and "devoid of laughter," that Fredric Jameson has claimed characterizes so much postmodern literary pastiche. Rather, Richardson gives the reader old-fashioned humorous imitations of other writers' styles that simultaneously function as respectful homage and as a way to advance his plot. When Proust finally employs his delicate olfactory senses for something other than inspecting his own behind, he solves the mystery of the stolen goods and provides Toklas with an explanation for Stein's continued absence. As Bonne Maman says to Toklas at the end of the book, "What it all comes down to is that delivery is an Art, like anything else." Richardson was nominated for the Leacock Medal for the novel in 2002.
In the introduction to Dear Sad Goat: A Roundup of Truly Canadian Tales & Letters (2002), a collection of some of his listeners' more-inspired submissions, Richardson states that there are two qualities he most appreciates about radio. The first, which he likens to a "deeply, embarrassingly Canadian" trait, is its technological "modesty": radio is a "faceless" medium "used laudably and blamelessly as the handmaid for an elemental human requirement: the need to tell and to hear stories." The second thing Richardson admires about radio is the way it "discourages passivity in its audience by requiring their active participation." These two qualities characterize Richardson's writing, which is at once quin-tessentially Canadian in its apparently mundane, "slice-of-life" focus and thoroughly cosmopolitan in its camp comedic stylings. Dear Sad Goat was nominated for a BC Booksellers' Choice Award in 2003.

Richardson's children's books Sally Dog Little (2002) and Sally Dog Little, Undercover Agent (2003) focus on the lovable and resourceful canine pet of the extremely proper and decorous Little family. Sally Dog--"They never called her Sally, for short. The Littles were a formal family. Formal families are not fond of 'for short'"--is instructed to bark only at burglars, to set a brisk pace during her daily walks, and to sleep only on baby Twinkle Little's bed. But Sally Dog is aware of much that the Little paterfamilias, in particular, is not, and from that knowledge hilarity ensues. Taking off from the saying, "Don't let the bedbugs bite," But If They Do (2003) is a nighttime fable about what happens if the bedbugs--and other creatures that haunt one's dreams--do, in fact, bite.

Richardson was the host of the annual Canada Reads contest on CBC Radio from 2003 to 2007. In 2004 he won the Vancouver Mayor's Award for Media and Recording Arts. Bunny Watson, the show Richardson began hosting for the CBC in 2004, took its title and its concept from the character played by Katharine Hepburn in the 1957 movie Desk Set: a reference librarian at the fictional Federal Broadcasting Network in New York who is responsible for researching the associations among arcane and seemingly unrelated things. After Bunny Watson ceased production in 2006, Richardson became the host of the CBC music programs Saturday Afternoon at the Opera and Sunday Afternoon in Concert. He is a regular contributor to several newspapers and magazines, including The Vancouver Sun, The Globe and Mail, and The Georgia Straight; since 2005 he has been a columnist for the Canadian edition of Reader's Digest.

In the children's book The Aunts Come Marching (2007) Richardson turns the popular campfire song "The Ants Came Marching One by One" into a rousing tale of a marching band of maiden aunts overstaying their welcome at a relative's home. The book won the 2008 BC Achievement Foundation Award for Early Literacy. Old Father William's Well-Ordered Universe: A Generally Reliable Compendium of Facts, Figures, and Formulae, Specifically Intended for the Bathroom Bound (and Those Who Love Them) (2008) is a miscellany of fun facts, bizarre coincidences, and strange connections that again betrays the influence of Richardson's radio career--in this case, the short-lived Bunny Watson--on his writing. The author, who claimed in a 2000 interview with Linda Richards that he writes "small books" and "literature light," actually offers his readers, through his preoccupation with what often gets overlooked closest to home, a large and always open window onto the wider world.

FURTHER READINGS:
FURTHER READINGS ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Interview:
Linda Richards, "January Interview: Bill Richardson," January Magazine (December 2000) [accessed 30 May 2011].
Reference:
Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism; or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1991), p. 17.

Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Dickinson, Peter. "Bill Richardson." Canadian Literary Humorists, edited by Paul Matthew St. Pierre, Gale, 2011. Dictionary of Literary Biography Vol. 362. Literature Resource Center, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/H1200014258/LitRC?u=schlager&sid=LitRC&xid=73a3d200. Accessed 29 Aug. 2018.

Gale Document Number: GALE|H1200014258

Bill Richardson
Born: August 11, 1955 in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada
Nationality: Canadian
Occupation: Radio host
Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2011. From Literature Resource Center.
Full Text: COPYRIGHT 2018 Gale, a Cengage Company
Updated:Nov. 11, 2011

Table of Contents

PERSONAL INFORMATION:
Born August 11, 1955, in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. Education: University of Manitoba, B.A., 1976. Addresses: Agent: c/o Author Mail, Douglas & McIntyre Publishing Group, Suite 201, 2323 Quebec St., Vancouver, British Columbia V5T 4S7, Canada.

CAREER:
Writer, humorist, poet. Worked as a children's librarian; Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), 1988--, Radio One, story producer and cohost of Gabereau, host of Crosswords, 1992-95, Radio Two, host of RSVP (renamed As You Like It), 1995-97, Radio One, host of Richardson's Roundup, 1997--, host of Canada Reads.

AWARDS:
Stephen Leacock Award for humor, 1994, for Bachelor Brothers' Bed and Breakfast; D.H.L., University of Winnipeg, 1998.

WORKS:

WRITINGS:
FOR CHILDREN
After Hamelin, Annick Press (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 2000.
(Compiler) Dear Sad Goat: A Roundup of Truly Canadian Tales and Letters, Douglas & McIntyre (Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada), 2002.
Sally Dog Little, illustrated by Céline Malépart, Annick Press (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 2002.
Sally Dog Little, Undercover Agent, illustrated by Céline Malépart, Annick Press (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 2003.
But If They Do, illustrated by Marc Mongeau, Annick Press (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 2003.
OTHER
Canada Customs: Droll Recollections, Musings, and Quibbles, Brighouse Press (Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada), 1988.
Queen of All the Dustballs: And Other Epics of Everyday Life, Polestar Book Publishers (Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada), 1992.
Bachelor Brothers' Bed and Breakfast, illustrated by Rose Cowles, Douglas & McIntyre (Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada), 1993, St. Martin's Press (New York, NY), 1997.
Come into My Parlour: Cautionary Verses and Instructive Tales for the New Millennium, illustrated by Chum McLeod, Polestar Book Publishers (Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada), 1994.
Guy to Goddess: An Intimate Look at Drag Queens, photographs by Rosamond Norbury, Whitecap Books (North Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada), 1994.
Bachelor Brothers' Bed and Breakfast Pillow Book, illustrated by Rose Cowles, Douglas & McIntyre (Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada), 1995.
Bachelor Brothers' Bedside Companion, illustrated by Rose Cowles, Douglas & McIntyre (Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada), 1996.
Scorned and Beloved: Dead of Winter Meetings with Canadian Eccentrics, Knopf Canada (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1997.
Oddball@large, Douglas & McIntyre (Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada), 1998.
Waiting for Gertrude: A Graveyard Gothic, illustrated by Bill Bechet, Douglas & McIntyre (Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada), 2003.
Sally Dog Little: Undercover Agent, illustrated by Celline Malelpart, Annick Pres (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 2003.
Columnist for the Vancouver Sun and XTRA West; narrator of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol, CBC Radio, 1999.

MEDIA ADAPTATIONS:
Many of Richardson's books have been adapted for audio, including After Hamlin, Dear Sad Goat, Sally Dog Little, Canada Customs, Queen of All the Dustballs, Bachelor Brothers' Bed and Breakfast, Bachelor Brothers' Bed and Breakfast Pillow Book, Bachelor Brothers' Bedside Companion, and Scorned and Beloved: Dead of Winter Meetings with Canadian Eccentrics.

Sidelights

Bill Richardson is well known to Canadian audiences as the host of several Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) programs. His debut came in 1984, when he read a Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale for the CBC Vancouver station, and his career as an on-air personality began in 1988. After functioning as a story writer and cohost for Vicki Gabereau's afternoon show for three years, his own Crosswords became the substitute for the first hour of Gabereau. He has also been heard by audiences in the United States, since his popular RSVP, renamed As You Like It, was carried by National Public Radio (NPR). The literary humorist is sometimes called Canada's Garrison Keillor. Richardson has also written a number of books, including several stories for children. His first volumes are collections of his thoughts and musings, many of which were generated by his radio programs, as well as by life itself. George Kaufman, in a review of Queen of All the Dustballs: And Other Epics of Everyday Life for Books in Canada, said that Richardson "has a wry, clever sense of humor."

Richardson's Bachelor Brothers' Bed and Breakfast is about brothers Virgil and Hector, who run their own bed and breakfast on an island near Vancouver. They have remained bachelors into their fifties, although Hector has a girlfriend who writes for a small scandal sheet. The brothers have a cat named Waffle and a potty-mouthed parrot named Mrs. Rochester. In addition to their stories, the book is a running account of the tales of their guests, who have noted them in the guest book. Richardson first presented them as episodes of the Gabereau show. He followed this work with two more "Brothers" books. Of the first book, Stephen Smith said in Quill & Quire that "full of bibliophilic nods and nudges, Bachelor Brothers' Bed and Breakfast is the product of an educated and sprightly imagination." And a Publishers Weekly reviewer wrote that "Richardson's voice is impressively versatile. . . . This quiet charmer is a bibliophile's delight."

Richardson, who is openly gay, has also produced the coffee-table book Guy to Goddess: An Intimate Look at Drag Queens, with photographer Rosamond Norbury. Canadian Book Review Annual's Ian C. Nelson noted Richardson's "honesty" in presenting the pictorial that also includes tips, adding that he "provides sympathetic--even endearing--insight into the world of gay drag." Maclean's contributor Chris Wood wrote that Richardson "claims to have little interest in the political agenda of many gay activists. 'I think it is good for people to know that is the way I live my life,' says Richardson. . . . 'But I don't want to be identified as a gay writer.'"

Scorned and Beloved: Dead of Winter Meetings with Canadian Eccentrics is Richardson's collection of biographical sketches about such intriguing present and past Canadians as a female prophet who once owned a healing duck and a man who lives in the secluded wilderness. James Horner wrote for Canadian Content online that "this is no pedestrian biography. It is a tale of many told through the experiences of one insightful individual," adding that it "proves itself an endearing labor of personal growth."

January Magazine contributor Linda Richards, who called Richardson "the quintessential Canadian," counted him among those authors "whose ability to write in several genres seems to push against their own success. Writers whose ability to tell many types of stories well and elegantly, combined with their own inability to see their work as important or meaningful, fights against the success of their books in the wider world." Richards reviewed After Hamelin, Richardson's first book for young people. It is the story of Penelope, who is now 101 years old and who was the single child left behind when the Pied Piper led the children from Hamelin forever. Richards felt that although the book is written for readers from approximately ten to thirteen, adults would also enjoy it. "Penelope's world, through Richardson's craft, is vast and lovely," asserted the critic. "Richardson manages the tale with a delicate combination of dry wit, happy irony, high adventure, and the merest touch of sadness."

Richards also interviewed Richardson about his radio program Richardson's Roundup, which the broadcaster calls just "The Roundup," and described as "a scrapbook or an album of some kind, and little bits of sound get pasted in. So there is fiction throughout, and there are radio dramas, but what people really like about it is the way it's audience driven." Richardson added, "I facilitate the telling of stories and sort of make it possible. I give [listeners] a forum to tell their stories. . . . And for my own satisfaction as an editor--which is really what I am there: an editor and presenter--for my own satisfaction I try to make it so there's a continuity, and one day relates to the next, and one part of the show relates to the others."

FURTHER READINGS:

FURTHER READINGS ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
PERIODICALS
Books in Canada, February, 1993, George Kaufman, review of Queen of All the Dustballs: And Other Epics of Everyday Life, p. 38.
Canadian Book Review Annual, 1994, Don Precosky, review of Come into My Parlour: Cautionary Verses and Instructive Tales for the New Millennium, p. 218, and Ian C. Nelson, review of Guy to Goddess: An Intimate Look at Drag Queens, p. 4227.
Kirkus Reviews, August 1, 1996, review of Bachelor Brothers' Bed and Breakfast, p. 1084.
Maclean's, August 1, 1994, Chris Wood, "Man of (Many) Letters," p. 44.
Publishers Weekly, July 29, 1996, review of Bachelor Brothers' Bed and Breakfast, p. 72.
Quill & Quire, December, 1993, Stephen Smith, review of Bachelor Brothers' Bed and Breakfast, p. 27; October, 1995, Bert Archer, review of Bachelor Brothers' Bed and Breakfast Pillow Book, p. 25.
ONLINE
Canadian Content, http://www.canadiancontent.com/ (August 12, 2004), James Horner, review of Scorned and Beloved: Dead of Winter Meetings with Canadian Eccentrics.
January Magazine Online, http://www.januarymagazine.com/ (August 12, 2004), Linda Richards, interview with Bill Richardson.*

Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Bill Richardson." Contemporary Authors Online, Gale, 2011. Literature Resource Center, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/H1000157050/LitRC?u=schlager&sid=LitRC&xid=ea0fd6d1. Accessed 29 Aug. 2018.

Gale Document Number: GALE|H1000157050

RICHARDSON, Bill. The Bunny Band
Susan Small
School Library Journal. 64.8 (Aug. 2018): p61+.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2018 Library Journals, LLC. A wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
http://www.schoollibraryjournal.com/
Full Text:
RICHARDSON, Bill. The Bunny Band. illus. by Roxanna Bikadoroff. 32p. Groundwood. Aug. 2018. Tr $16.95. ISBN 9781773060934.

PreS-Gr 1--In this rhyming story, Lavinia, a badger, loves her garden. Tending it with care, she is upset when she discovers that someone has eaten her vegetables during the night. She sets a trap for the culprit and catches the white bunny who is responsible for die theft. Reminiscent of the Aesop fable "The Lion and the Mouse," the culprit begs to be released and tells Lavinia that he will reward her if he's let go. The adorably illustrated bunny band shows up in the garden and the music has an amazing effect on the crops. Due to the bunny serenade, the vegetables grow extraordinarily large. "The onions were huge, like moose. Zucchinis, far from weeny, were the size of a caboose." Lavinia is happy, the band plays, and everyone shares the enormous vegetables at the Autumn Harvest Fair. VERDICT This fun rhyming text is a great read-aloud choice that can connect to various content areas.--Susan Small, Salve Regina University Library, Newport, RI

Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Small, Susan. "RICHARDSON, Bill. The Bunny Band." School Library Journal, Aug. 2018, p. 61+. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A548561704/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=512ea775. Accessed 29 Aug. 2018.

Gale Document Number: GALE|A548561704

Richardson, Bill. The Alphabet Thief
Lindsay Persohn
School Library Journal. 63.1 (Jan. 2017): p75.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 Library Journals, LLC. A wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
http://www.schoollibraryjournal.com/
Full Text:
RICHARDSON, Bill. The Alphabet Thief, illus. by Roxanna Bikadoroff. 40p. Groundwood. Mar. 2017. Tr $16.95. ISBN 9781554988778.

K-Gr 2--The Alphabet Thief steals each letter of the alphabet, creating linguistic chaos. Can she be stopped? Not until she steals As through Z's in the most predictable order. This clever story shows readers the result of verbal irony in its images again and again. Playful illustrations provide concrete examples, portraying baths as bats, poets as pets, horses as hoses, squashes as sashes, and many other silly transmutations. As a read-aloud, this rhyming tale is bound to lead to creative conversation about the textual and illustrative depictions of odd things left in odd situations as letters disappear from their words. Readers may be tempted to try their own letter thieving, dropping letters from words to make other recognizable words. VERDICT Sure to delight wordsmiths of all ages. A fun read-aloud that lends itself to curricular application.--Lindsay Persohn, University of South Florida, Tampa

Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Persohn, Lindsay. "Richardson, Bill. The Alphabet Thief." School Library Journal, Jan. 2017, p. 75. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A476559547/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=a903c628. Accessed 29 Aug. 2018.

Gale Document Number: GALE|A476559547

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Print Marked Items
Richardson, Bill: THE BUNNY BAND
Kirkus Reviews.
(June 1, 2018):
COPYRIGHT 2018 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Richardson, Bill THE BUNNY BAND Groundwood (Children's Fiction) $16.95 8, 7 ISBN: 978-1-77306-
093-4
After Lavinia the badger snares and releases a veggie-stealing bunny in her garden, the thief promises to
return with a musical band to help her garden grow.
The bunnies do arrive, "by the dozen, by the score-- / cream and tan and black and brown, / and more and
more and more." They play all sorts of instruments--Bikadoroff depicts everything from banjos to bongos,
pan pipes to a xylophone. The music is magical indeed. "Their serenade, enchanted, made / her onions
huge, like moose. / Zucchinis, far from weeny, / were the size of a caboose." Just two nights of musicmaking
seem to produce the gigantic yields, as a page turn later, Lavinia's veggies capture the ribbons at the
"autumn harvest fair." Lavinia whips up a splendid feast to thank the bunnies, who promise to return again
to jam next spring. Richardson's rhymes scan reasonably well, propelling the tale along. Bikadoroff's
pleasant watercolors winsomely depict Lavinia's woodland garden, cozy tree-hollow home, and
prizewinning produce, providing plenty of small details for children to study.
Singsong-y and sweet. (Picture book. 3-6)
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Richardson, Bill: THE BUNNY BAND." Kirkus Reviews, 1 June 2018. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A540723290/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=c2fe7b07.
Accessed 29 Aug. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A540723290
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Richardson, Bill: The Alphabet Thief
Sadie Tucker
Resource Links.
22.5 (June 2017): p8.
COPYRIGHT 2017 Resource Links
http://www.atcl.ca
Full Text:
[G]
RICHARDSON, Bill
The Alphabet Thief
Illustrated by Roxanna Bikadoroff.
Groundwood Books, 2017. 40p Illus.
Gr. 1-3. 978-1-55498-877-8. Hdbk. 17.95
The Alphabet Thief is a zany, busy book that takes a novel approach to phonetics, with a special emphasis
on phonemic awareness in particular. The Alphabet Thief has come to town and is turning everything
upside down as she steals one letter after another. It's never a good surprise when the cloud in the sky
suddenly becomes loud because all of the Cs have been stolen!
The rhyming text flows well and is extremely rhythmic. This makes it quite fun to read aloud, although care
must be taken not to speed too quickly through the book. Due to the complexity of the text (it is rife with
novel words and the phrasing is not simple) racing through the book will quickly lead to a loss of interest.
Despite the action and wit found in this book, a loss of interest is a notable concern with this title. At first
reading, the story feels quite long. No shortcuts are taken as every letter of the alphabet is represented. This
is great from a phonetics standpoint, but verse after verse of crazy letter shenanigans does begin to wear
thin after a while. Fortunately, most of the book does not need to be read in order for it to be enjoyed. This
may mean that a reader jumps ahead to see how the narrative resolves itself and then revisits different parts
of the story in subsequent readings.
The ink and watercolour illustrations are busy, with at least two scenes on each page. This supports the
frenetic feel of the text. As noted earlier, young readers will likely run into a number of novel words and
phrases in this book. The pictures do a great job of supporting the reader as they figure out what is going on.
From a diversity standpoint, it would have been nice to see (at the very least) an array of skin tones
represented.
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Overall, The Alphabet Thief is a charming and unique tale that will have readers both laughing and
wondering at the difference a single letter can make.
Thematic Links: Alphabet; Thievery; Phonetics; Silliness; Crime
[G] Good, even great at times, generally useful!
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Tucker, Sadie. "Richardson, Bill: The Alphabet Thief." Resource Links, June 2017, p. 8. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A500500882/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=f5a06bc4.
Accessed 29 Aug. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A500500882
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The Alphabet Thief
Publishers Weekly.
264.2 (Jan. 9, 2017): p67.
COPYRIGHT 2017 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
* The Alphabet Thief
Bill Richardson, illus. by Roxanna Bikadoroff. Groundwood
(PGW, dist.), $16.95 (40p) ISBN 978-1-55498-877-8
Richardson and Bikadoroff reveal just how important letters are as the eponymous Alphabet Thief--who
looks one part witch, one part rogue musketeer--goes on a crime spree, stealing one letter at a time. The
result: madcap linguistic chaos, which Richardson describes with glee in rhymes that never take a false step:
"The Alphabet Thief stole all of the I's./ The maid was made mad in a glance./ And artists at easels would
rather have measles./ Than find that their paints were now pants." Bikadoroff's airy ink-and-watercolor
portraits are just as much fun, and the book's small trim size and big sense of fun make it a smart pick for
language lovers of any age. Ages 5-9. (Mar.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"The Alphabet Thief." Publishers Weekly, 9 Jan. 2017, p. 67. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A477339385/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=d9120185.
Accessed 29 Aug. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A477339385
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The Alphabet Thief
Amy Seto Forrester
Booklist.
113.9-10 (Jan. 1, 2017): p98.
COPYRIGHT 2017 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist/
Full Text:
The Alphabet Thief. By Bill Richardson. Illus. by Roxanna Bikadoroff. Mar. 2017. 40p. Groundwood,
$16.95 (9781554988778). Gr. 1-3.
"The Alphabet Thief was daring and smart." So begins this whimsical rhyming book about a stealthy bandit
who steals letter after letter, from A to Z. All over the world her crime spree causes havoc, as she turns
boats into bots, bowls into owls, a chair into hair. It's up to the young, ponytailed, and bespectacled narrator
to save the day just before the Alphabet Thief absconds with the Y's and Z's. This slim book features one
letter per page with occasional breaks to lament the unstoppable robber. The editorial-cartoon-like ink-andwatercolor
illustrations provide visual context and humor. The presence of sophisticated vocabulary and
concepts--fishermen's pikes that turn into pies, a pirate that becomes irate, a quark that becomes an ark--
make this a book for sharing, rather than independent reading. Occasionally the confining rhyme scheme
seems forced, and purloined letters inexplicably reappear, but overall the text will inspire a passion for
humorous wordplay. A similar conceit appears in Michael Escoffier's Take Away the A (2014), which will
pair well for the younger set.--Amy Seto Forrester
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Forrester, Amy Seto. "The Alphabet Thief." Booklist, 1 Jan. 2017, p. 98. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A479078138/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=fb28d0f1.
Accessed 29 Aug. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A479078138
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Richardson, Bill: THE ALPHABET
THIEF
Kirkus Reviews.
(Dec. 1, 2016):
COPYRIGHT 2016 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Richardson, Bill THE ALPHABET THIEF Groundwood (Children's Picture Books) $16.95 3, 14 ISBN:
978-1-55498877-8
In rhyming text, this nontraditional alphabet book playfully depicts a thief in the act of stealing the letters of
the alphabet from A to Z. "The Alphabet Thief stole all of the A's, / And all of the coats became cots. / All
of the fairs were turned into firs, / And all of the boats became bots." The verse never falters as the thief
makes her way through the alphabet. Clever handling of the letter Q pairs it with U, turning "queasy" into
"easy" and "squash" into "sash." What the black-cloaked thief doesn't see is that she is being followed by
the narrator, a red-haired, white sleuth in beret and ponytail with a dog sidekick. Can they stop this terrible
thief? Of course. The gumshoe takes all the Y's and Z's, turns them into slingshots and "ammo" and fires
them at the thief, who promptly falls asleep. The ink-and-watercolor illustrations share space with the text
in energetically varied layouts, the diminutive trim reminiscent of the old Nutshell Library books. The
ending poses a small problem for libraries by addressing readers: "And who was the hero who saved the
day? / It was me! You can write my name here." While the larger format of the similarly themed Take Away
the A, by Michael Escoffier and Kris Di Giacomo (2014), is more suitable for group sharing, this sneaky
romp will do well one-on-one. (Picture book. 5-8)
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Richardson, Bill: THE ALPHABET THIEF." Kirkus Reviews, 1 Dec. 2016. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A471901960/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=0ae6c9cc.
Accessed 29 Aug. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A471901960

Dickinson, Peter. "Bill Richardson." Canadian Literary Humorists, edited by Paul Matthew St. Pierre, Gale, 2011. Dictionary of Literary Biography Vol. 362. Literature Resource Center, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/H1200014258/LitRC?u=schlager&sid=LitRC&xid=73a3d200. Accessed 29 Aug. 2018. "Bill Richardson." Contemporary Authors Online, Gale, 2011. Literature Resource Center, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/H1000157050/LitRC?u=schlager&sid=LitRC&xid=ea0fd6d1. Accessed 29 Aug. 2018. Small, Susan. "RICHARDSON, Bill. The Bunny Band." School Library Journal, Aug. 2018, p. 61+. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A548561704/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=512ea775. Accessed 29 Aug. 2018. Persohn, Lindsay. "Richardson, Bill. The Alphabet Thief." School Library Journal, Jan. 2017, p. 75. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A476559547/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=a903c628. Accessed 29 Aug. 2018. "Richardson, Bill: THE BUNNY BAND." Kirkus Reviews, 1 June 2018. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A540723290/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF. Accessed 29 Aug. 2018. Tucker, Sadie. "Richardson, Bill: The Alphabet Thief." Resource Links, June 2017, p. 8. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A500500882/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF. Accessed 29 Aug. 2018. "The Alphabet Thief." Publishers Weekly, 9 Jan. 2017, p. 67. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A477339385/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF. Accessed 29 Aug. 2018. Forrester, Amy Seto. "The Alphabet Thief." Booklist, 1 Jan. 2017, p. 98. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A479078138/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF. Accessed 29 Aug. 2018. "Richardson, Bill: THE ALPHABET THIEF." Kirkus Reviews, 1 Dec. 2016. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A471901960/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF. Accessed 29 Aug. 2018.

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