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The Perfect Percival Priggs
Written and Illustrated by Julie-Anne Graham
Running Press Kids       5/26/2015
978-0-7624 -5506-5
32 pages      Age 4—8

“Percival Priggs wants to be the perfect child in order to please his seemingly perfect parents. But even when Percy gets his family into a mess of a situation, his parents’ love for him remains absolute perfection.” [front jacket]

Review

“Percival Priggs was perfect.
His parents were perfect.
His grandparents were perfect.
Even his pets were perfect.”

Wow! The Priggs are a tremendously perfect family. This puts a lot of pressure on young Percy to be perfect in everything he does. Both parents are professors with shelves of awards between them. Percy has his own shelf that is nearly as filled with shiny trophies and perfect straight-A report cards. But Percy is finding it is tiring to be so perfect all of the time. If he told his parents this, would they love him any less? Percy is afraid they might, and so he keeps his feelings to himself.

One weekend, Percy has so many competitions to complete he has no idea how he will ever finish on time. He isn’t thrilled about many of the competitions he is entered in, but he must to find a way to finish perfectly before the weekend is over. Percy comes up with a plan to finish faster, only making one small miscalculation . . . that sends everything into a disastrous cavalcade of humorous tumbles. He just knows his parents will be furious. What will happen to Percival Priggs now that he is no longer a Perfect Percival?

I love this story. How many of us think we must be perfect and perform all our duties perfectly, never giving ourselves a break? Count me in. Yet, what does that teach our children? I love that Percival’s parents finally open up to their son, showing him that they were never always perfect (and maybe still not). This takes a load off young Percy’s shoulders. The illustrations (pen and ink on drafting film, with textures and backgrounds in Photoshop), are goofy with an old-fashioned sense of style and are extremely appealing. Oddly, there are words embedded in the character’s head, face, and eyeglasses (which all three wear). I’m not sure, but are these people so intent on perfection that they actually were their thoughts? It is an interesting idea and illustration technique.

I love the message from these two imperfect parents: They love Percy for who he is, not what he wins, and they keep on trying for perfection because they love what they do, not because they want to be perfect. They let Percy off the hook, telling him to find out what it is he loves to do, and then do that, no matter the imperfections or failures he will encounter along the way. Percy does just that in a humorous attempt to find out what he loves to do.

Roller-skating . . . nope, he falls too much. A rock star . . . well, no, not a rock star. In the end, Percy’s trophy shelf is as full as ever, but looks a whole lot different. It starts representing the real Percy. And his best trophy, the one he adores the most? Nah, not telling. Read The Perfect Percival Priggs to find out.

THE PERFECT PERCIVAL PRIGGS. Text and illustrations copyright © 2015 by Julie-Anne Graham. Reproduced by permission of the publisher, Running Press Kids, Philadelphia, PA.

Purchase The Perfect Percival Priggs at Amazon—Book Depository—IndieBound Books—iTunes Books—Running Press Kids.

Learn more about The Perfect Percival Priggs HERE.

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Find The Perfect Percival Priggs Activity Pack HERE.

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Meet the author/illustrator, Julie-Anne Graham, at her website: http://www.julieannegraham.com/
.           .  Twitter: @Ja_Illustrator
Find more picture books at the Running Press Kids’ website: http://www.runningpress.com/rpkids
.             . Running Press Kids is an imprint of Running Press Book Publishers, and a member of the Perseus Group.

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Copyright © 2015 by Sue Morris/Kid Lit Reviews. All Rights Reserved

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Full Disclosure: The Perfect Percival Priggs by Julie-Anne Graham, and received from Running Press Kids, (an imprint of Running Press Book Publishers), is in exchange NOT for a positive review, but for an HONEST review. The opinions expressed are my own and no one else’s. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”

Imagine that Banksy, (or J.S.G. Boggs, or some other artist whose name starts with “B”, and who is known for making fake money) creates a perfectly accurate counterfeit dollar bill – that is, he creates a piece of paper that is indistinguishable from actual dollar bills visually, chemically, and in every other relevant physical way. Imagine, further, that our artist looks at his creation and realizes that he has succeeded in creating a perfect forgery. There doesn’t seem to be anything mysterious about such a scenario at first glance – creating a perfect forgery, and knowing one has done so, although extremely difficult (and legally controversial), seems perfectly possible. But is it?

In order for an object to be a perfect forgery, it seems like two criteria must be met. First of all, the object must be a forgery – that is, the object cannot be a genuine instance of the category in question. In this case, our object, which we shall call X, must not be an actual dollar bill:

1.) X is not a dollar bill.

Second, the object must be perfect (as a forgery) – that is, it can’t be distinguished from actual instances of the category in question. We can express this thought as follows:

2.) We cannot know that X is not a dollar bill.

Now, there is nothing that prevents both (1) and (2) from being simultaneously true of some object X (say, our imagined fake dollar bill). But there is an obstacle that seemingly prevents us from knowing that both (1) and (2) are true – that is, from knowing that X is a perfect forgery.

Imagine that we know that (1) is true, and in addition we know that (2) is true. In other words, the following claims hold:

3.) We know that X is not a dollar bill.

4.) We know that we cannot know that X is not a dollar bill.

Knowledge is factive – in other words, if we know a claim is true, then that claim must, in fact, be true. Applying this to the case at hand, this means that claim (4) entails claim (2). But claim (2) and claim (3) are incompatible with each other: (2) says we cannot know that X isn’t a dollar, while (3) says we know it isn’t. Thus, (3) and (4) can’t both be true, since if they were, then a contradiction would also be true (and contradictions can’t be true).

Thus, we have proven that, although perfect forgeries might well be possible, we can never know, of a particular object, that it is a perfect forgery. But an important question remains: If this is right, then what, exactly, is going on in the story with which we began? How is it that our imagined artist doesn’t know that he has created a perfect forgery?

In order to answer this question, it will help to flesh out the story a bit more. So, once again imagine that our artist creates the piece of paper that is visually, chemically, and in every other physical way indistinguishable from a real dollar bill.  Call this Stage 1. Now, after admiring his work for a while, imagine that the artist then pulls eight genuine, mint-condition dollar bills out of his wallet, throws them on the table, and then places the forgery he created into the pile, shuffling and mixing until he can no longer identify which of the pieces of paper is the one he created, and which are the ones created by the Mint. Let’s call this Stage 2. How do Stage 1 and Stage 2 differ?

At Stage 1 we do not, strictly speaking, have a case of a perfect forgery. Although the piece of paper the artist created is physically indistinguishable from a dollar bill, the artist can nevertheless know it is not a dollar bill because he knows that he created this particular object. In other words, at Stage 1 he can tell that the forgery is a forgery because he knows the history, and in particular the origin, of the object in question.

Stage 2 is different, however. Now the fake is a perfect forgery, since it still isn’t a dollar, but we can’t know that it isn’t a dollar, since we can no longer distinguish it from the genuine dollars in the pile. So in some sense we know that the fake dollar in the pile is a perfect forgery. But we can’t point to any particular piece of paper and know that it, rather than one of the other eight pieces of paper, is the perfect forgery. In other words, in Stage 2 the following is true:

• We know there is an object in the pile that is a perfect forgery.

But the following, initially similar looking claim, is false:

• There is an object in the pile that we know is a perfect forgery.

We can sum all this up as follows: We can know that perfect forgeries exist – that is, we can know claims of the form “One of those is a perfect forgery”. But we can’t know, of a particular object, that it is a perfect forgery – that is, we can never know claims of the form “That is a perfect forgery”. And it is this latter sort of claim – that we know, of a particular object, that it is a perfect forgery – that leads to the contradiction.

The post The impossibility of perfect forgeries? appeared first on OUPblog.

        

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Back when I was practicing law, I had a sign hanging in my office that said: Perfectionism is an elegant defense against real life.

I kept a separate note inside my desk that read:  If I don’t win your case, I’ll eat a bug. I leave it to you to decide how those two things matched up.

(And for more adventures of being a law student and lawyer, you can read my lawyer romance LOVE PROOF. It’s lots of fun.)

The issue of perfectionism haunts a lot of us. We’re never quite there. Wherever “there” is. And sometimes that feels like a moving target.

It’s why I was interested in this TED talk by Sarah Lewis about success versus the “near win.” About success versus mastery. I loved her stories of artists and writers who knew their work was never complete, but who put it out there anyway. (Or who ordered their friends to burn everything after the artist died, but too bad–friends hardly ever obey those crazy wishes.)

It’s why even though I know some of my novels aren’t perfect, I still let you read them. Because I like the stories and want to share them with you, even though sometimes when I look back at them I might wince at this line of dialogue, that awkward scene, some weird way of putting something that at the time I thought was cool. Oh well. I did my best. And I’m going to keep moving forward and write the next one, rather than constantly mess around with one I’ve already “finished.”

Which is my way of saying that if you don’t love every single word I write, that’s okay–I probably don’t, either. But overall I’m happy with the idea that you and I sat around a campfire one night and I told you this story from start to finish. And we had fun. There were marshmallows. And then the next night we moved on to some new story instead of me saying, “You know last night when I told you the girl in the story’s name is Rose? It’s Giselle instead. And that part about her hating her mother? Forget it–her mom died.” Etc. Etc. BORING. Move on. We already got to The End on that one–give me something new.

With that, I give you Sarah Lewis and her talk “Embracing the Near Win”:

My boyfriend shared this with me recently, reminding me that writing is a process. We need to make room for our imperfections to turn into creative assets!

My boyfriend shared this with me recently, reminding me that writing is a process. We need to make room for our imperfections to turn into creative assets!

I was one of three new kids in my bunk at camp in 1989.  The rest of the girls who were in my bunk had been together for a few years and were known for getting perfect tens on daily bunk inspections.  That summer, I was the kid who made my bunk get nines, rather [...]

It doesn't matter how close to perfection you are now; it matters that you are headed in the right direction.


I attribute this comforting quotation to Ganesh Baba, but, to be honest, I don't know who said it. Baba's soft, comforting side was one I knew well, but it's not the side he shows in his writing and it emerges only rarely in the recordings I've listened to. What he does say about perfection is almost always about the importance of striving for it.

The statement arrived in my consciousness one morning some months ago as I stretched my leg and back in the mahamudra. Baba was watching from his picture on the altar.


Deeply engaged in the practice, I was attending to my body's subtle and not-so-subtle responses as I inched closer and closer to closing the circuit when the thought came.


Yogic and tantric lineages use the term mahamudra -"high" "gesture"- for practices they consider most central to their teaching. I've been practicing the Kriya mahamudra for more than thirty years, sometimes more, sometimes less. Over the years it's improved, but my 60-year-old body, while built very well for carrying babies both inside and out, was never not perfectly aligned; and my mind, which leans toward being in charge and being right, is not inclined to focus on weakness.

For many years, I always felt not-good-enough about the physical aspect of my practice - however much time or effort I put in seemed not-enough. Only relatively recently have I begun to able to override the constant vague feeling of guilt by giving my full attention to the practice itself, a big step.

When the new thought arrived, my last underlying feelings of inadequacy faded away.

We are all imperfect; there's no more point in dwelling on our weaknesses than there is in dwelling on our strengths. It's ego both ways.

Baba tells us that conscious evolution is about using humanity's specific gift of free will to strive for an ideal state in body, mind and spirit. Accepting what is as it is, the feminine side of the practice, is as much part of the ideal as inching forward, the masculine side is.

"It doesn't matter how far from perfection you are; it matters that you are facing the right direction now."

This is what's on my mind today. Perfection and rejection.

The wadded up tracing paper in the photo is just a small fraction of what I wadded up and threw out for ONE illustration that I was trying to get just right. Over and over again I traced and retraced and changed things; I walked away, did chores, came back, changed it again; thought I 'had it' finally, slept on it, then changed it again. Over and over. Until finally the deadline loomed and I had to get something I could live with, so I did, and I am, and life goes on.
But will it be perfect? No.

And today I had to take my Wendell to the vet and found out what I've been suspecting all along; he needs to go see a specialist and will probably need surgery to correct some weird bladder thing he has going on.


Poor little Wendell was a stray tomcat I took in a year ago and had neutered, vaccinated and licensed, and he's now a very special member of my family and I love him to pieces. To pieces. And he's always had this problem and I've always figured that's why he was homeless: someone else couldn't deal with it and threw him out.
He ended up on the reject pile because he wasn't perfect.

So I've been all sad and worried about him, and have done a good deal of fussy chores to help work it out. (My garage floor is swept and mopped - scary. The flower beds are all watered. The dead lily stalks are all trimmed. The laundry is done and all the clutter is put away.)

I've also been frustrated with myself for taking so dang long to get this one bloody drawing right, and was tallying up how much time I waste on 'do-overs'.

I don't even know where I'm going with this. I just needed to vent.
Wendell will hopefully be OK, eventually, after a lot of stress and vet visits and more scratches on my arm from trying to get him into the carrier (even when sedated ~ him, not me) and some sleepless nights and prayers and money and more money and lots more money...

I guess I'd better get cracking on some more perfect art (and order more tracing paper while I'm at it...)

Sorry to be a downer.
Maybe the next post will have new perfect art to show off!

No, I did not knit this. Althea Merback did. (And I hope I don't get in huge trouble for posting this picture here that I pulled from her site, but considering I'm giving her a plug, I'm hoping she won't mind.)

She knits these wee wee wee almost microscopic pieces. They are just INCREDIBLE!
I'm at a loss for words, really. I've been squinting a bit with some pieces I've been working on, using 0 or 00 needles and really skinny yarn. But that's nothing compared to this.
Pieces take her hundreds of hours. Be sure to check out the runway show with Marcia Backstrom's dolls.
She's obviously a little crazy, but in a really good way.
(I mean that as a compliment Althea, in case you read this.)