Sit on a Potato Pan, Otis!: More Palindromes
Agee, whose previous palindromic volumes include Go Hang a Salami! I'm a Lasagna Hog! and So Many Dynamos!, makes another dizzying effort to exhaust the English-language palindrome supply. He provides animal lovers with the slogans "Revile liver!" and "Step on no pets," along with some horses who cheer, "Yahoo! Hay!" City dwellers certainly will relate to the exclamation, "Dog doo? Good God!" while slackers will sigh along with, "No panic, I nap on." Scrabble buffs might feel vexed by Agee's regular use of proper names ("Lee has a race car as a heel"; "Ed is loopy poolside") and brand names ("Naive was I ere I saw Evian"; "Lonely Tylenol"). Novices can get in on the fun with simpler samples like "Petite P" and "Tip it." Agee complements his palindromes with rough pen-and-ink sketches and gray wash on a white background; a spread of a prison-like stripe camouflage for "See referees?" takes the cake. He injects a note of mayhem with his liberal use of exclamation points and, judging by the volume's price, he gets the sales department in on the joke, too. Word-gamers are advised to proceed with caution into these verbal somersaults, which could ignite a serious compulsion to reverse spellings. Agee himself appears to be in an advanced stage of his self-imposed condition, considering his magnum opus: "A man, a plan, a cat, a bar, a cap, a mall, a ball, a map, a car, a bat, a canal: Panama." Don't say we didn't warn you! All ages.Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.