Customer Reviews

Nonsense!

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Valerie Fisher's unique illustrations highlight this brief collection of limericks by Edward Lear. Her style recalls late Victorian-era theatrical productions (think of the "Peter Pan" staging in the recent Depp/Winslett movie, "Neverland") fused with derivatives found in Monty Python and "Yellow Submarine." As in these settings, Fisher juxtaposes the human and the mannequin, the ordinary and the surrealistic, the natural and the mechanical. All of this plays wonderfully against Lear's tightly structured 4-line poems in which the first, second, and fourth lines rhyme with each other (the last line usually through a repetition of the word in the first line), and the third line rhymes with itself:

There was an old man of Dunluce,
Who went out to sea on a goose:
When he'd gone out a mile, he observ'd with a smile,
`It is time to return to Dunluce.'

While the poem doesn't dazzle, Fisher's accompanying picture does. She sets rows of blue-striped waves against each other, each topped with crashing wave spirals. The plainly drawn "old man" sports a modest two-piece striped bathing suit and a curling moustache that echoes the waves. She captures the era masterfully with these two elements, then adds details. A wooden sign reading "N. Ireland" places the action, and she includes textbooky line drawings of assorted fish and turtles. For fun, she plops in a bright plastic crab, and its kitschy modernism sets off the overall Victorian aesthetic. The waves and sea creatures look rigged with wire and ready to move, waiting only for the pull of a stagehand.

Fisher's work is consistently imaginative, although she slips at times. A picture of owls taught to sip tea instead of eating mice might have shown a happy mouse scampering away. An "uncommonly thin" man who is accidentally baked seems an oddly violent choice, perhaps more so because he is from Berlin (pre-WWII, I know, but still...). In any event, the illustrations are very kid friendly; she defines unfamiliar words (as in the following limerick) within the picture opposite the poem.

There was an old man on the Border,
Who lived in the utmost disorder;
He danced with the cat, and made tea in his hat,
Which vexed all the folks on the Border.

The picture shows a red and purple dressed man with a cat on his arm, two plastic lizards, two "vexed" neighbors (drawn in an unfocused fun-house manner), and an unscrolled fortune-cookie paper that reads: "*vexed* annoyed and irritated." The book contains 15 of these mini-dramas, and Fisher's fancy is equal to Lear's. There's a brief biography of Lear, and a map of Europe showing where the limericks take place. This playful, cleverly illustrated celebration of Lear's "nonsense poetry" is appropriate for all ages, perhaps especially for kids in elementary school.

can be appreciated on so many levels . Fisher's wit is a wonderful cheeky foil to Edward Lear's. Get it when you care as much about the reader as the readee. It's going to stay on the shelf long after the children aren't children any more. A real gem

I love reading this to my nieces and nephews it is really good. Every time you read it you see new things in the illustrations. I think we are beginning to know some of them by heart.

My almost 5 year old daughter is autistic, and finding books she really likes is a challenge. You never know what will be a hit and what will be a flop with her. Well, this is the biggest hit yet. I really thought it would not interest her, although I loved it from first look---I love Lear, and the illustrations were so wry and interesting---very Victorian looking and with little definitions of tough words from the limericks mixed in. However, from the first read, she was hooked. She wants to hear it read about 50 times a day. Today, although she is a fairly reluctant talker, she started trying to talk in limericks, with the classic beginnings "There was an old man of..." and the intonation. It was a breakthrough for her---I've never heard her imitate rather than just repeat from a book. If this can hold her interest, I think it would REALLY be a hit with kids that would probably get the humor even more. Edward Lear is a classic poet for kids, and this is a great way to get your kids into his work.

I find this book dreadfully boring and outdated. My kids didn't like it either. The rhymes are almost unintelligible and unimaginative. Sounds like I'm in the minority opinion though.