A Rule Is To Break: A Child’s Guide to Anarchy is a perfectly wonderful picture book about the spirit of anarchism and its utterly fitting dovetail with the joy of childhood. The book is full of excellent advice, wonderfully illustrated.
Along with the pages reproduced in this post, there’s such goodies as “Give stuff away for free,” “Speak your mind,” and “Listen to the tiniest voice.”
Also: “Build it, don’t buy it” and “Stay up all night.” There’s nothing about setting fire to cars or joining the black bloc — just sound advice about being happy, generous and caring for your community.
The book has become something of a Tea Party bogeyman, which is dumb and would be a tragedy if it wasn’t for the fact that the ensuing publicity will likely turn it into a bestseller. I’m sure none of the criticism can have come from people who’ve actually read the book — rather, they’re likely reacting to the blurb from Bill Ayers, which says “a children’s book on anarchy seems somehow just right: an instinctive, intuitive sense of fairness, community, and interdependence sits naturally enough with a desire for participatory democracy, feminism, queer-rights, environmental balance, self-determination, and peace and global justice.”
A Rule Is To Break: A Child’s Guide to Anarchy