Among those accolades is the honor of having Garrison Keillor personally select his poem “The Beautiful Sandwich” to read Thursday, Jan. 26, on his national NPR show The Writer’s Almanac.
His first book of verse, American Mastodon, won the St. Lawrence Book Award. The prize is awarded yearly to an unpublished collection of poems or short stories, which is then published by Black Lawrence Press
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Ricca is well acquainted with superheroes both past and present, but it was another larger-than-life figure that inspired his book’s title. American Mastodon refers to a grand, shaggy mastodon with 15-foot curving tusks at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History. The prehistoric creature loomed large for Ricca, who visited the museum both as a child and as an adult.
His reaction, he said, was: “Here’s this massive animal that once freely roamed Earth and now doesn’t move an inch in the museum.” Link to The Daily
Dig this great retro-60's stop-motion trailer for the book:
Trailer Credits: Animagination by Stu Howe (UK); Poem by Brad Ricca (USA)
