Any reader’s vocabulary is likely to grow after reading Merritt’s quirky wordplay, but edification is not the point; fun is,...
From “aa” to “zz,” a compendium of curious words.
Scrabble enthusiast Merritt, songwriter and singer in the Magnetic Fields, had trouble remembering all the two-letter words so useful for the game. Making up rhymes helped, and before long, he had written poems for the 101 two-letter words allowed in the Scrabble dictionary. Illustrated by longtime New Yorker cartoonist Chast (Can’t We Talk about Something More Pleasant?: A Memoir, 2014, etc.), Merritt’s literary debut is sly, silly and playfully absurd. Even a common word like “is” inspires Merritt to flights of poetic fancy: “ ‘Is You Is or Is You Ain’t / My Baby’; sold a million, / and not by being played at any / debutante’s cotillion.” For the esoteric word “os,” Chast’s rendering of an animated landscape accompanies this ditty: “Os: a spine of gravel dropped / by long-gone giggly glaciers / playing in their sandbox, leaving / scribbles and erasures.” Merritt’s Scrabble dictionary apparently includes cockney (“Oi,” meaning “hey there”), Scottish (“Ae” means one, “Bo” means friend), Egyptian (“ba” represents the soul), archaic spelling variations (“wo” for woe) and slang abbreviations (“bi” for bisexual). Merritt sometimes reaches for the unexpected meaning of a word: The common verb “go” becomes, instead, a noun: “Go: a subtle game of skill, / with stones of black and white. / One game can go on until / the middle of the night.” Chast aptly captures the mood of the rhymes with her characteristic unkempt, harried and often bewildered characters, both human and animal. For “Id: the source of primal drives,” her bug-eyed green monster is appropriately lustful; her rendering of Santa Claus (“ ‘Ho, ho, ho’ says old Saint Nick”) makes him look a bit debauched.
Any reader’s vocabulary is likely to grow after reading Merritt’s quirky wordplay, but edification is not the point; fun is, and Merritt and Chast deliver just that.Pub Date: Oct. 6, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-393-24019-1
Page Count: 216
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: June 10, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2014
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
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