If I Were You

It's another amazing day and you get to be amazed moment-by-moment, page by silly page in the colorful and life-affirming new gift book, If I Were You.

The recipe for If I Were You is quite simple: combine quirky illustrations, a poet's deft language, a seeker's curiosity and a comedian's well-honed timing and you get one moving, inspirational and thoroughly goofy book.

Author-illustrator, comedian and amateur philosophy major Gary Turchin has crafted a book that tickles the funny bone, twangs the heartstrings, and touches the soul of any wounded mortal.

This is the feel-good gift book of the year, of any year. A picture book for grown-ups, but grown-ups who are going to have to break down and buy the kids their own copy once they've shared it with them.

In If I Were You, the day begins not with a whimper, but a Wow! So much to be amazed by, and amused by, as we careen through a series of If-I-Were-You observations about life, observations that are both impossible and important. It's a day like no other, and yet it's everyday when we choose to live in wonder.

It is in these observations that If I Were You shines. Its seemingly cornball wisdom somehow makes sense, even when, on the surface, it doesn't. That's because If I Were You is about what's below the surface, what's in our hearts, our hopes, our dreams our wishes, our aspirations.

If I Were You may be the first book to retort the age old, "Well, you know, someday, you ll have to get a real job..." with a, "Well, you know, someday you'll have to get a real dream..."

Game. Set. Match. Dream.

And of course, the If I Were You day ends in gratitude, with thank you in a multitude of languages, and then it's off to dreamland, and other days and other dreams and other golden opportunities for amazement.

Unpretentious, un-preachy, imperfect, improbable, and naively grand, If I Were You has less than 1,000 words, start to finish. Why say more?