- quirky and entertaining book of short poems
- vocabulary and difficulty slowly increase as the book progresses
- convo: x3 seemingly-innocent rhymes “escalate quickly” (see below), spanking mentioned, a father reacts poorly, a man is implied to be killed
- simple illustrations are fun but give away some riddles
Type: poetry book for kids
Ages: 7+
Author: John Ciardi
Illustrator: Robert Osborn
Personally, books that set out to “educate” are often misses. Since the author-poet set out to do just that for his own daughter, I was prepared for the inevitable let down (ha). However, he surprised us all! My kids and I got a great kick out of the silly poems with riddles mixed into them. Most of them are about “a man.”
- The Sleepy Man
- The Man That Lived in a Box
- Have You Met This Man?
- The Man in the Onion Bed
- I Met a Man With Three Eyes
- I Met a Man That Showed Me a Trick
- and many more!
All the rhymes had great cadence and it was delightful to read them aloud. My only caution (conversation point above) is regarding three poems:
First, a man who was whittling did such a poor job of it that he suddenly cuts his throat “and when he saw his head was gone, he whittled another and put that on.” It was a weird flash of graphic violence, but the general context and humorous mood softens it.
Secondly, one poem is about a boy who gets a spanking.
Third, a boy finds a man down in a well. There is hilarious back-and-forth as the boy misunderstands what the man wants. It ends suddenly with the boy dumping a stone down on his head and implies the man died.
So, like I said–quirky! If a book can be “extremely out-of-print” as opposed to simply “out-of-print,” this book would be it. Goodreads didn’t even have a cover image. All that said, if you come across this book and your kids are old enough, you all just might get a kick out of it.
Happy reading!