Technically unassailable and intermittently riotous, Lemieux's (What's That Noise?) watercolors only occasionally enhance the verses of the well-loved 19th-century wordsmith. Illustrating about 50 of Lear's limericks, the pictures sit primly on the page, symmetrically contained in rectangular borders or floated delicately amid negative space, and their mannerisms seem an effort to mime the droll artifices of the verse form. Her personal visions sometimes mesh with the loopiness of Lear's rhymes: for "There was an Old Lady of Chertsey,/ Who made a remarkable curtsey... " she draws a ballerina's tutu and legs as a screw about to spin into the ground. Other matches don't click, as when a blase-looking fellow personifies 'That ecstatic Old Person of Tring." Given the sameness of the art and the formulaic quality of nonsense limericks, the volume risks repetitiousness unless taken in small doses. All ages.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From School Library Journal
Grade 3 Up-This small-sized collection of 53 of Lear's nonsense limericks invites children to share the poet's look at the foibles of some of the world's silliest people. Lemieux has heightened the humor with her bright, detailed watercolors that echo the sharp noses and strange expressions of Lear's original drawings. Readers will laugh at the "person of Tring," whose embellishing nose ring actually encircles his nose; at the tiny "person of Bromley," whose Borrower-like dwelling is in the floorboards; and at the old man with a distinctively froggy face who lives in a marsh. Each rhyme is illustrated with either a full-or a double-page painting. Libraries that own the more comprehensive Of Pelicans and Pussycats (Dial, 1990) may find this title to be an additional purchase; on the other hand, those who wish to encourage youngsters' interest in Lear and in humorous verse will want to own this volume as well.
Barbara Chatton, College of Education, University of Wyoming, Laramie
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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