A few links today, none of them are related:

It’s old news by now, but Sid Fleischman died March 17 at the age of 90.

I cannot write a better eulogy than those that have already been written. I will only add this. The Whipping Boy was the third book I ever loved.

The first was a dinosaur dictionary; the second was Roald Dahl’s BFG. I did not have a fourth until high school.

On a completely unrelated subject, behold the magic of redactive poetry. It’s like sculpting for poets. They take another person’s writing and chisel away the unwanted words until they are left with a poem.

My favorite example is someone who used Glenn Beck as their source material.

Also unrelated — The New Yorker expounds upon the psychology of Choose Your Own Adventure stories. (I remember the CYOA books as the only stories where the author was allowed to kill the reader repeatedly and in gruesome fashion.)

Finally, I offer René Magritte’s not-a-pipe as a Magic card. (That makes two Magic card references this week, which is enough.)

-Jason Lea, JLea@News-Herald.com