Heaping helpings of clever wordplay, for better or verse.
Three dozen delights for fans of puns and wordplay.
“Once I stayed awake all night / and wondered what I’d see. / I sat and pondered in the dark / until it dawned on me.” Demonstrating firm command of exact rhymes and rollicking metrics, Torrible’s debut features a set of pungently sharp-witted lyrics. Language lovers who can control their giggles well enough to read on will learn that clocks were not allowed in the library because “they tocked too loud,” meet a circus pony who admits to being “a little hoarse,” discover why leopards are so bad at hide and seek (“They’re always spotted”), and sympathize with a job seeker who “loathed serving coffee despite all the perks. / He dreaded the slow daily grind.” “Have your morning bowl of coal,” a mother train urges her wheeled offspring, “and don’t forget to choo.” Dunn’s breezy images of animals, emblematic items, and light-skinned young folk add gleeful visual notes to the relentless punnery. For any who still don’t get the jokes even after the poems are read aloud (which they beg to be), the author has appended a stolidly literal breakdown of each one at the very end, capped by an invitation to budding punsters to chime in. “Shredded cheddar / melts with ease. / Get your own. / It’s nacho cheese!”
Heaping helpings of clever wordplay, for better or verse. (Picture-book poetry. 6-10)Pub Date: March 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781957655468
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Gnome Road Publishing
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: tomorrow
No substitute for blankets or shelter, but perhaps a way of securing some warmth for those in need.
Gaiman’s free-verse meditation on coming in from, or at least temporarily fending off, the cold is accompanied by artwork from 13 illustrators.
An ambassador for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, the author put out a social media appeal in 2019 asking people about their memories of warmth; the result is this picture book, whose proceeds will go to the UNHCR. For many refugees and other displaced persons, Gaiman writes, “food and friends, / home, a bed, even a blanket, / become just memories.” Here he gathers images that signify warmth, from waking in a bed “burrowed beneath blankets / and comforters” to simply holding a baked potato or being offered a scarf. Using palettes limited to black and the warm orange in which most of the text is printed, an international slate of illustrators give these images visual form, and 12 of the 13 add comments about their intentions or responses. The war in Ukraine is on the minds of Pam Smy and Bagram Ibatoulline, while Majid Adin recalls his time as a refugee in France’s “Calais jungle” camp. “You have the right to be here,” the poet concludes, which may give some comfort to those facing the cold winds of public opinion in too many of the places where refugees fetch up. The characters depicted are diverse. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
No substitute for blankets or shelter, but perhaps a way of securing some warmth for those in need. (Picture book. 6-9)Pub Date: Oct. 31, 2023
ISBN: 9780063358089
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Quill Tree Books/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 26, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2023
A lackluster collection of verse enlivened by a few bright spots.
Poems on various topics by the actor/screenwriter and his kids.
In collaboration with his now-grown children—particularly daughter Erin, who adds gently humorous vignettes and spot art to each entry—Bob Odenkirk, best known for his roles in Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul, dishes up a poetic hodgepodge that is notably loose jointed in the meter and rhyme departments. The story also too often veers from child-friendly subjects (bedtime-delaying tactics, sympathy for a dog with the zoomies) to writerly whines (“The be-all and end-all of perfection in scribbling, / no matter and no mind to any critical quibbling”). Some of the less-than-compelling lines describe how a “plane ride is an irony / with a strange and wondrous duplicity.” A few gems are buried in the bunch, however, like the comforting words offered to a bedroom monster and a frightened invisible friend, not to mention an invitation from little Willy Whimble, who lives in a tuna can but has a heart as “big as can be. / Come inside, / stay for dinner. / I’ll roast us a pea!” They’re hard to find, though. Notwithstanding nods to Calef Brown, Shel Silverstein, and other gifted wordsmiths in the acknowledgments, the wordplay in general is as artificial as much of the writing: “I scratched, then I scrutched / and skrappled away, / scritching my itch with great / pan-a-ché…” Human figures are light-skinned throughout.
A lackluster collection of verse enlivened by a few bright spots. (Poetry. 6-8)Pub Date: Oct. 10, 2023
ISBN: 9780316438506
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 12, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2023
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