All That Glitters: Is Bob Odenkirk's Zilot Generation Alpha's Where the Sidewalk Ends?

The veteran funnyman is poised to introduce a whole new audience to his wit.

You’re reading PopPoetry’s 200th post! Click here to check out the searchable archive of past posts.

All That Glitters is a semi-regular feature of PopPoetry that offers (re)appraisals of musicians, actors, and other culture-makers who have written and/or published poetry. Check out more while you visit the archive, and subscribe so you don’t miss a post!

---

Read to your children. READ TO THE KIDS! It’s a battle cry so loud that even childless folks are well aware that reading to children is important. But what about writing with your children? Who’s championing that? In a new phase of a long career of writing funny and being funny, Bob Odenkirk certainly is, and he just may have (co-)written a new children’s classic in the process.

Children’s books are a booming business, but poetry written for children, much like poetry written for adults, is a niche niche. While many narrative children’s books do attempt rhyme and meter (something I’ve learned through reading the same books to my toddler over and over and over again) few bill themselves as poetry or rhymes outright.

Tougher still? Humor for children that lives on the page rather than on television.

It takes a man like Odenkirk, who got his start on SNL and went on to create Mr. Show with David Cross, co-star on Breaking Bad, and then star in the spinoff series, Better Call Saul. Odenkirk went from the writer’s room to the weird world of alt comedy to winning Emmys for his drama work. But through it all, he’s funny. Sometimes he’s the kind of funny that doesn’t make you laugh—if you’re reading this, Bob, bear with me—but the deep kind of funny that puts you in touch with the absurdity of life.

📸: Pablo Villaça/Twitter

In an interview with Publisher’s Weekly, Odenkirk admitted that he’d “always wanted to” collect the funny poems he’d written with his children as a book, particularly as an artistic collaboration with them. It’s the kind of wish so many of us have, particularly middle-aged and older folks. And if you’re already famous, finding a willing publisher is a breeze. But Zilot, the book that Odenkirk created, is far from fluff: it’s a weird and wonderful addition to the canon of children’s literature and a wonderful testament to bringing your creative life into your parenting.

All That Glitters: The Star of It's a Wonderful Life Wrote a Wonderfully Unnecessary Book of Poetry

Like Shel Silverstein, whose classic Where the Sidewalk Ends comes immediately to mind when reading Zilot, Odenkirk comes from artistic traditions outside literature, which lends the book a unique flavor. But Bob is reluctant to wear the author mantle alone, and in an interview with the Today Show, he was careful to note that he wrote the poems both with and for his children.

It’s wonderful to see a high-profile celebrity championing writing poems with one’s children. So much of parenting involves either carrying on with your creativity alongside them or nurturing their own creations. But collaborating on artistic projects together, even from a young age, is a far-less-discussed idea than merely reading to them and exposing them to the creativity of others.

What also makes this book rise above so many other celebrity literary projects is that it very clearly is intended to have value for others beyond the writer himself. In the book’s delightful afterword, the Odenkirks (Bob and daughter Erin, who illustrated the book) write, “After we had read many books, I wanted to show my kids that somebody writes all these books. Some person. That person is called an “author,” and while they may be a grown-up now, they were a kid like YOU once upon a time… You can do it, too.”

But it’s not just the declared authorial intent that makes the book valuable to others: Odenkirk defined his audience—young people—and aimed the book squarely at them. The project was meant to speak to others, which has the effect of tempering Odenkirk’s celebrity.

Beyond all that, the book is just funny and sweet and well-made. It’s a wonderful addition to a child’s bookshelf—or an adult’s.

In an interview with Collider, Odenkirk was frank about what it took to rescue a folder full of poems from his life as a father and rehab them into a consumable book for others:

I knew that we’d probably written 50 or 70 of them, and I knew that a couple of them were good. As it turns out, I counted, there are 13 poems in this book that are pretty much identical to what we wrote. And then, there are another 15 that are a version with a few lines changed or a new stanza. There’s almost 30 where there was an idea there that went somewhere and had a decent rhyme scheme. And then, there are another 20 that are derived from loose pieces from those poems. And then, there are another 15 or whatever that are completely new, from the last four years.

Some of the poems are wise, offering life advice about the power of “lollygagging,” for example. Many are just silly and wonderfully bizarre, the kind of thing kids will latch right onto. There’s even a bit of ars poetica here. “Poe Out a Poem” goes like this: “Write down what happened today / in a poem, / for all days are special / if you just get to know ’em.”

The blend of silliness and pathos is disarming in this collection. For example, I would be proud to have my daughter read and consider this poem as a young person:

WHEN I GROW UP

When I grow up,
I’ll be a garbage truck!
Big, green, and smelly.
I'll eat trash with a metal arm,
loading garbage into my belly.

When I grow up,
I'll be a house,
with floors (at least three).
I'll be a place where people love to be,
and that way, you see, I'll never be lonely.

When I grow up,
I'll be a raindrop,
racing down from the clouds,
landing with a PLOP.
Given the chance,
I'll be the water that waters the plants.
I'll live forever; I'll never die.
I'll grow something new
with every goodbye.

The poignancy of the final lines of the last two stanzas… impressive! I also love the way that Odenkirk is rarely beholden to rhyme but instead uses it as a kind of flavoring spice. He moves away from it when it serves him and returns to it for effect. It’s not surprising that a talented actor and writer like Odenkirk has excellent timing.

Let this be your invitation to collaborate with your children, or maybe your own inner child instead.

---

Related