Poems I Wrote When No One Was Looking
The creators of Oops! (2008) offer another poetry collection for grade-schoolers and their families to read aloud. Filled with puns and rhymes, the verse blends the silly and the gross: “Mom’s or Dad’s nose / I wouldn’t pick either.” New Yorker cartoonist Koren’s large, black-and-white ink drawings are mischievous and immediate and extend the wordplay through the exaggerated body language of kids, surrounded by their families and pets. There are some wry contemporary references: Dad has a great GPS that helps the family maneuver through highways and intersections to the mall, but in the parking lot after shopping, the family gets lost trying to remember where the car is. The physicality of a young child’s experience is a recurring theme (“The lint in my brother’s navel . . . the wax in my brother’s ears”), and it works perfectly with the wordplay (“Lend me everything but your ear”). Then there is the kid bored at the ballet: “It’s tutu much . . . prancing around in their undies . . . I couldn’t hear a word.” Grades 2-5. --Hazel Rochman