My Momma Likes to Say
PreSchool-Grade 3-Brennan-Nelson introduces children to cliched expressions by setting them in a poetic format: "`When life hands you lemons, make lemonade,'/my momma likes to say./I'm not sure what she means/but I like it anyway." Each poem continues with a response to the saying: "If life gives me lemons/I'll squeeze them good and hard./Then add some sugar, stir it up/and sell it from our yard." Many of the rhymes do not scan well. In small type, the idioms are further explained with questions, followed by trivia, historical information, and, in the case of the lemon quote, a recipe for lemonade. Some of these entries are choppy and filled with non sequiturs, while others are quite interesting. Donovan's color illustrations are uneven-"Sleep tight. Don't let the bed bugs bite" shows three adorable creatures happily snoozing alongside the boy narrator, but the spreads for "Cat got your tongue?" and "I have eyes in the back of my head" are disturbing to look at. One page invites children to "write the things your momma says to you." For books on idioms, libraries would do better to get another copy of Marvin Terban's In a Pickle and Other Funny Idioms (Clarion, 1983) or Loreen Leedy and Pat Street's There's a Frog in My Throat (Holiday, 2003).Bina Williams, Bridgeport Public Library, CTCopyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.