OOPS!

Making a strong bid for the year’s most uproarious set of new verse, this collection opens with a “Whoosh!”—“The wind is blowing / quite a breeze. / The wind is blowing / on my knees. / The wind is blowing / its spring dance. / It tells me I / forgot my pants.” It closes by rhyming “laugh” with “giraffe,” and in between delivers an unrelieved spate of clever knee-slappers on topics from sports to siblings, shopping to passing gas. Koren illustrates each of the 100-plus entries with characteristic crosshatch sketches—mostly of children wearing innocent, glum, annoyed or ingratiating looks, as appropriate. Katz’s earlier outings, most of which were illustrated by David Catrow, may have more visual flash, but this one’s both larger and more suited to independent readers. Children—never mind adults—will find the urge to read aloud from these pages well nigh irresistible. One more: “I stuffed my lunch / in my race car— / salami and some soda. / It used to be a Chevy, / but it now is a / Toy-odor.” (Poetry. 7-11)