This collection will encourage several giggle-filled read-throughs.
A loopily meta collection of silly, interactive poetry.
Madan’s collection of rhymed verse lives up to its subtitle thanks to a poem with 12 numbered blanks and 12 lists of seven words or phrases each to insert, mix-and-match style, in those blanks…that equals seven-to-the-12th-power possible poems! You do the math. (All 13 billion rhyme.) The fun starts in the illustrations even before the poetry does, with characters that recur throughout the book. A mummy pops up on the copyright page, for instance, and is then seen running in the distance in one illustration and watching a movie in another before finally showing up in its own poem: “Mummy wrapped in / Hoary cloths— / Scrumptious feast for / Hungry moths.” On the page with the table of contents, a bespectacled, bearded white man peers out of a rock and keeps peeping in but doesn’t introduce himself until the end, when he is revealed to be “Professor Dobbleydook, / Inventor of the Page Machine, / Which lets me travel through this book / To spy on any page or scene.” The interrelations continue, as does the foolishness. There is a “cracked-concrete” poem (some of the words have fallen to the bottom of the page), a rebus chant composed entirely of pictures of Australian animals, and some poems in comic strips. The cast appears to be of many races and species.
This collection will encourage several giggle-filled read-throughs. (Poetry. 5-10)Pub Date: March 18, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-68437-150-1
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Wordsong/Boyds Mills
Review Posted Online: Feb. 25, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
The more engaging musical version is available separately through iTunes and other distributors. You won’t hear the typos.
Purposeful and saccharine-sweet, these poems on religious and secular topics take on new life on the accompanying CD.
Wharnsby, a musician, has an appealing folk style, but the poetry on the page sounds forced and often trite. To interest young children in diversity, he writes such lines as “People are a lot like candy! / There’re [sic] all so different and dandy.” Describing “Piles of Smiles” that have been hidden away, he laments: “Someone misplaced the key, / causing global tragedy.” The poems range from the personal “I had a Chirpy Chick,” in which the narrator focuses on love for a pet and love for her grandmother, to a didactic poem entitled “The Mosque.” Typographical mistakes abound, with the use of “their” for “they’re” in the poem “Prayer” and in the example above, among others. Vibrantly colored flowers and plants, echoed in the handsome prayer rugs that illustrate “Prayer,” curl their way around multiracial children and adults. Most adult women wear hijab, as do some girls. With more and more Muslim families in North American communities, there is certainly a need for books of this type. Unfortunately, as with much other religious poetry collections for children, the message takes precedence over the words.
The more engaging musical version is available separately through iTunes and other distributors. You won’t hear the typos. (Poetry. 5-9)Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-86037-444-2
Page Count: 44
Publisher: Kube Publishing
Review Posted Online: Dec. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
Welcome, heart-gladdening poems that never come amiss.
Prelutsky is back to make your day better, even if it’s already a good one.
Here come 103 more poems from the master of silliness; the guy must dream in poetry, his output is so steady and strong. And he is everywhere in the poetic world. He tackles grief—a young gent on the afternoon his hamster died: “It was a poor, unpleasant pet / That I should probably forget. / It never had a proper name… / I miss it deeply, all the same.” He introduces a disarmingly honest goblin—“I have an awful odor, / An unattractive voice. / I’m nasty and annoying / By nature and by choice.” He effortlessly turns a haiku conundrum: “All evening I sing, / Happy on a lily pad, / Celebrating spring.” He hands readers new words, little gems, for them to play with—“easy to abhor” or “Some unsavory subterfuge”—or lets them watch as he turns a world on its head: “…I thought I made an error once— / But I was just mistaken.” Urbanovic’s black-and-white artwork displays a comfortably free hand, roving between loose and scrunched as it depicts Prelutsky’s vast company of players: Gludus, Wiguanas, Appleopards and Flamingoats.
Welcome, heart-gladdening poems that never come amiss. (index) (Poetry. 5-10)Pub Date: March 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-06-201457-3
Page Count: 144
Publisher: Greenwillow Books
Review Posted Online: Dec. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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