Customer Reviews

Edward Lear's the Scroobious Pip (A Harper trophy book)

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This is one of the most memorable books from my childhood. The illustrations are wonderful,and I spent many hours trying to find all the different animals, birds, fish and insects mentioned in the poem. It is a neat poem, too. I would recommend this book for second or third grade children or older. A young child might find the picture of the Scroobious Pip just a little bit scary.

I used to think that I knew the words of the Scroobius Pip in this poem, more or less, since each word could have been the same as in the verse before it, simply repeating a line at the end of each verse, as the words of the chorus of a song have a tendency to show up, one at a time, each in their proper places; but when the Scroobious Pip has something to say, like "Chippetty flip! Flippetty chip! My only name is the Scroobious Pip!" it might come out, "Flippetty chip! Chippetty flip!" or "with a liquid sound, Pliffity flip! Pliffity flip!" or "with a whistly sound, Wizzeby wip! Wizzeby wip!" or "Chippetty tip! Chippetty tip!" My dictionary had a lot of definitions for pip which weren't much help in understanding what this poem is all about. I thought a pip would be something small, but the dictionary thought it might even be British slang for a "metal insigne of rank on the shoulders of commissioned officers." There is an interpretation of the word, pip, as a verb, applying to a young bird chipping a hole in the shell of its egg. The pictures of the Scroobious Pip in this book don't look like it just crawled out of a shell, but the curiousity which is expressed might apply to something which has just been born as well as to something which is unusual because it defies classification. If wearing glasses and having a feathery beard, horns like a goat and a beak like a parrot or owl might be considered signs of wisdom, the hero of this book is being shown as a wise whatever it is, as well as being impeccably dressed in a coat and vest. The illustrations by Nancy Ekholm Burkert in the edition that I have (Harper & Row, 1968) are excellent, and she also did the Foreword, which says, "It is this ideal of harmony between ourselves and nature which I feel is present in the rhythmic verses of The Scroobious Pip and which made me so want to illustrate them."