If you love Mondays, eat breakfast for dinner or have 5,738 emails cluttering your inbox, congratulations. These are signs that you, perhaps unwittingly, have escaped “adultitis” — which, according to Jason Kotecki, is “a sinister epidemic that transforms people into zombie-like doo-doo heads and makes the Black Death look like a trip to Disneyland.”
The Madison-based author, artist and speaker is on a mission to help grownups avoid burnout, embrace their creativity and achieve an enviable work-life balance. His new book, Penguins Can’t Fly + 39 Other Rules That Don’t Exist, is a gorgeous yet whimsical collection that debunks some of the most useless so-called rules anyone over the age of 21 feels a social obligation to follow.
“The stuff I’m talking about is not rocket science,” Kotecki says. “But I remind people it’s okay to escape adulthood.”
Kotecki, who is “39 going on 12,” lives on Madison’s northeast side with his wife (a former kindergarten teacher) and their three kids (all under the age of 7). He previously created greeting cards, drew a cartoon strip and self-published several books while amassing a collection of 150 rules that don’t exist and incorporating them into speaking engagements.
Then along came Sun Prairie-based literary agent Michelle Grajkowski, who helped Kotecki pitch a book about those rules to publishing houses in New York; editors at St. Martin’s Griffin responded enthusiastically, and Penguins Can’t Fly went on sale June 23.
“When you write a book about rules that don’t exist, there’s pressure to not do a normal book tour,” Kotecki says, which is why the 25-city, 13-state #Notarule Tour includes stops at five zoos, at least two ice cream socials and Madison’s Art Fair on the Square. Kotecki will appear at American Family Insurance’s DreamBank, 1 N. Pinckney St., on July 11 from 1:30 to 3:30 p.m.
Unconventional activities will include breaking rules that don’t exist, including decorating ugly cookies and drawing on kids. That’s one of Kotecki’s favorites, by the way: “If you’re a parent and you’re not using that power to draw on your children, you’re totally missing out.”
Penguins Can’t Fly is similar to the Chicken Soup for the Soul series — only way cooler, with a square-shaped design, playful artwork, fun fonts and 236 warm and colorful pages.
“Art has always been my first love, and I look at myself as an artist first,” Kotecki says. “That leads into everything else. And hopefully, my work will make you laugh or think.”
Or both.
Penguins Can’t Fly
By Jason Kotecki, St. Martin’s Griffin
