"Dirt for breakfast, dirt for lunch and dirt for dinner! Dirt, dirt, dirt! And look--now there's even a hair in my dirt! The final insult--I can't stand it any longer! I hate being a worm!" It isn't easy being an earthworm, and when one little guy gets mad at a hair in his dinner, Father worm decides to tell him a story. What follows is an ecological fable that combines environmental lessons with the kind of off-the-wall humor that could only come from one man: Gary Larson. Fans of The Far Side have been waiting for Larson's latest work since January 1995 when the final Far Side strip appeared in newspapers around the world, and they won't be disappointed. Father worm tells the story of Harriet, a beautiful but stupid maiden who frolics through the forest enjoying the beauty of nature, but completely failing to understand it. The young earthworm learns that nature is not a cute and cuddly theme park designed for the entertainment of stupid humans, but a complex, fragile, and sometimes violent system where every creature plays a vital role, even the lowly worm.

Larson is never preachy, the text is hilarious, and his illustrations are filled with wonderful sight gags. It may look like a children's book, but there's enough here to keep the most sophisticated adult chuckling for hours. You might learn something, too. --Simon Leake


From School Library Journal
YA-A truly twisted fairy tale that is perfect for teens who enjoy the macabre. In his offbeat and inimitable style, Larson presents a biology lesson through his narrator, an earthworm. During dinner, when a young worm expresses disgust at finding a hair in his dirt as well as at his lot in life as the "lowest of the low," his father tells him a story about a beautiful human maiden, Harriet, who loves nature but doesn't understand it. As she cavorts through the woods, her ignorance produces some unfortunate results including the demise of a land tortoise. The humor and clever illustrations will appeal to YAs while illuminating some realities about wildlife. A charming firefly is observed flashing a prospective mate by opening his raincoat. Harriet feeds a sweet group of squirrels, while behind a tree a lone red squirrel is forced to hand over his acorn to a gang of gray squirrels, one of which is wearing a T-shirt bearing the inscription, "I kicked Thumper's Ass." The story concludes after Harriet saves a mouse; as the vector of a deadly disease, it infects Harriet, who dies and decomposes above the worm family's home, hence the hair in the dirt. Father worm explains that those who romanticize parts of nature while disparaging others fail to understand the inherent interconnections. The little creature regains his self-esteem in the knowledge that lowly worms aerate the earth's soil, preparing it for plant life, thus insuring the existence of the animals that depend on it.Debra Shumate, Bull Run Regional Library, Manassas, Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Library Journal
From the celebrated Far Side comic.Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.


Washington Post
" There's a Hair in My Dirt! is hysterical . . . more entertaining than any science class I remember and the foreword by biologist Edward O. Wilson proves it's legit."


New York Times
"The comic genius, the author of the blackly buoyant and sorely missed Far Side comic strip ... Mr. Larson is among us again, not as a syndicated cartoonist, but as a contemporary fabulist."


Book Description
Once upon a time, in a place far away, lived a man named Gary Larson who used to draw cartoons. It was a cartoon that appeared for many years in daily newspapers and was loved by millions. (And was confusing to millions more.) But one day he stopped.Gary went into hiding. He made a couple of short films. He played his guitar. He threw sticks for his dogs. They threw some back.Yet Gary was restless. He couldn't sleep nights. Something haunted him. (Besides Gramps.) Something that would return him to his roots in biology, drawing and dementia -- a tale called There's a Hair in My Dirt! A Worm's Story.It begins a few inches underground, when a young worm, during a typical family dinner, discovers there's a hair in his plate of dirt. He becomes rather upset, not just about his tainted meal but about his entire miserable, wormy life. This, in turn, spurs his father to tell him a story -- a story to inspire the children of invertebrates everywhere...


About the Author
Gary Larrson creator of the phenomenally successful cartoon, The Far Side®, grew up in Tacoma, Washington. As a kid he liked to draw but never formally studied art or considered being a cartoonist. His real love was biology, which ultimately became a frequent topic in his cartoon panel.Larson has the distinction of having the scientific community name a biting louse and a butterfly after him. He lives in Seattle, Washington--above ground.

FROM OUR EDITORS

The Barnes & Noble Review
When Gary Larson stopped drawing The Far Side and went into hiding some years ago, a little something died in the heart of the cartooning world. Armies of loyal fans mourned his parting as if he were a loony but well-loved distant cousin — that one who kept pouring glasses of punch down the front of his pants and sticking live grasshoppers up his nose to amuse the kids at Uncle Floyd's wedding, perhaps. But, inevitably, as time passed so did the sense of loss. The place that Larson's strip had occupied on the comics page was taken up anew; our attention was diverted elsewhere to other pressing matters of global import; life, as it tends to do, went on. Then that little something that had died began to decompose, and a hideous stench filled the air — it was the reek of bad cartoons! For some of the strips that replaced The Far Side>/i> in all those newspapers were, as quite frankly many comic strips are — how shall we say it? — worthless.

Now, thank goodness, he has come back to us. THERE'S A HAIR IN MY DIRT! marks Larson's triumphant return after three years on hiatus from cartooning (as it turns out, he had been doing little more than fiddling around with a few short films and playing with his dogs — kind of like George Michael after the "Listen Without Prejudice" album). It's a simple story — a simple worm's story, as the subtitle declares — told in the form of a child's fable. But it's not really for the kiddies. As returns go, it's a doozy.

It begins with a family of worms, father, mother, and son, sitting down atthetable for a nice dinner of fresh dirt. Then, to his horror and disbelief, the little worm finds a gleaming hair on his plate. This brings first surprise, then an angry tirade in which he laments his fate of being born a worm, the lowliest creature on earth. Father Worm, "a proud invertebrate and a learned member of the Annelida phylum (even with his small rudimentary brain)," launches into a story to teach his son a lesson.

The story Father Worm tells is that of a fair young maiden who one fine spring day takes an adventuresome stroll down her favorite woodland path. Her journey, as far as she's concerned, is full of all the wonder and magic of the great outdoors: Flowers bloom, birds chirp; nature is on display in all her riotous and abundant glory. The maiden, a well-meaning if naive lass, is ecstatic, and she communes rapturously with all the living things she meets. But nature, as our slimy narrator is keen to point out along the way, is not always what she seems to be.

I won't ruin the ending for you; it's quite worthy of being kept secret. I will tell you that it is a happy one — if you're a worm, anyway, and maybe even if you're not — and that it does have a moral. And, like the best of Larson's stuff, it is dark. In fact, it's shockingly dark. It's pitch-black as night. Larson fans (and who isn't one?) will love it.

To say that this is Larson's first non-Far Side,/i> work is a bit deceptive. THERE'S A HAIR IN MY DIRT! is classic "Far Side" humor, only stretched out into an extended narrative for the first time. This proves to be a good form for the bio-cartoonist, as it gives his decidedly weird sense of fun more room to breathe. The illustrations are also more extensive than we're used to seeing from Larson: big, vivid, two-page color spreads with wacky perspectives that are bursting with the absurd human faces and sneering animals and insects we've come to love. There are also hidden treats lurking on every page — beavers lighting forest fires, birds cooking their own eggs on skillets, dung beetles plying their trade: all kinds of goodies.

Gary Larson has come back in style, there's no doubt about it. THERE'S A HAIR IN MY DIRT! is sure to satisfy the millions of scientists who worship him as a god, as well as the people of other persuasions who dig him. Lets all hope that he sticks around for a while — the world is certainly a more interesting place with him in it

FROM THE PUBLISHER