Book Review: Me, Myself, and Bob by Phil Vischer

Stars: 5 out of 5
Pros: Highly entertaining autobiography

Cons: None

The Bottom Line:

Rise and fall of Bob

Honesty, humility

And entertaining

The Rise and Fall of VeggieTales and Big Ideas

Anyone who pays attention to the Christian market in the last 15 years has heard of a little phenomenon called VeggieTales. They are a series of computer animated videos that use singing talking vegetables to teach spiritual lessons to kids of all ages. The videos do it with lots of humor both kids and their parents will appreciate. But this isn't a review of the videos. Instead, it's merely an introduction to this book about the series creator.

Phil Vischer had a dream. As he describes in his autobiography, Me, Myself, and Bob, he felt called by God to create Christian alternatives to mass media. And he wanted to be good at it. From an early age, he had an interest in film. As an adult, he transitioned that to computer production and eventually started Big Idea and VeggieTales.

From one computer in a spare bedroom, the company grew. As more and more people began to discover just how good the videos were, sales and the company grew. But all was not smooth sailing. The company mushroomed then crumbled, ending in bankruptcy. Just what went wrong? Well, that's what this book is all about.

And it's a highly entertaining read. Phil interjects his narration with the dry wit and funny stories you'd expect from the man behind VeggieTales. By no means is it a whoa-is-me story. In fact, I felt Phil took too much of the blame for what went wrong. I did appreciate the fact that he goes out of his way to not name many of the players in the story. Yet he still manages to keep everyone straight for us so there's no confusion over who the various players in the drama are.

The last two chapters detail what Phil learned from all this. First, he discusses lessons from the business world. He lays them out one after the other. While there's nothing particularly new here, they are expressed in a fresh way and certainly tie in with the story we've just read. Then he discusses his Spiritual growth and the new direction in his life. This was a very moving chapter and challenged me, too.

Partially because of the wit, this book is almost impossible to put down. I stayed up too late a couple nights in a row because I was hooked on the story. Since the book does deal with computer animation, it does get technical, but that's pretty much restricted to one chapter and doesn't go on too long.

Me, Myself, and Bob is a must read for any VeggieTales fan who wants the inside scope on what really happened to their favorite Veggies.