A love poem to a jelly donut, an ode to a rocking chair, quatrains by and about bugs and beetles... it's Canadian bard Dennis Lee, at his finest. This quirky poet has been amusing readers for decades with verses both silly and sweet, in such mouthwatering titles as Dinosaur Dinner (With a Slice of Alligator Pie). In Bubblegum Delicious, Lee takes the rhythms of childhood playgrounds and creates verses bursting with appeal, from the wacky "Goober and Guck" ("You'll quack like a duck and / You'll smell like a truck-- / So eat your nice sandwich / Of goober and guck!"), to the poignant "If Lonesome Was a Pot of Gold," to the macabre "Dead Men in Edmonton." A small boy and his dog lead readers through the collection, with a host of hilariously bizarre and uncouth insects slipping in their two cents' worth whenever they can. ("You bug me, slug, you bug me. / You bug me all day long. / So tug your coif and bug right off, / Before I do you wrong.")
Acclaimed illustrator David McPhail bounces right along with Lee on this boisterous ride, capturing the boyish exuberance, whimsy, and tender moments of each verse. After devouring Bubblegum Delicious, readers of all ages will be chomping at the bit for more from the remarkable Dennis Lee. (Ages 6 and older) --Emilie Coulter
From Publishers Weekly
Lee and McPhail (The Ice Cream Store) return with another consistently outstanding collection of verse. Working in a range of moods, Lee serves up cheerful nonsense rhymes as well as poems that find elegance in the everyday: "You too lie/ down, the drowsy room is/ close and come to darkness./ Hush, you/ too can sleep at last. You/ too lie down." A chain of entries links the volume to the timeless authority of playground chants and Mother Goose rhymes in their recasting of childhood classics, as in "I ordered a TV-vee-vee/ To see what I could see-see-see" or "Fly me round the microwave./ Fly me round the moon./ Fly me like a millionaire/ On a Saturday afternoon!" Of note are slangy minor entries, printed in small type and worked into the illustrations (e.g., printed sideways, along the pickets of a fence; or between the branches of a leafless tree); these unfold silly surprises, including several with a mild gross-out factor and one about the Beatles. McPhail, working in his spring-like watercolor palette, unifies the poems by featuring a boy and a dog. The pair calmly coexists with the dragons or lions or wooly mammoths that make themselves at home in the art, as do a group of comically outlandish bugs. Startling readers into appreciation, the dexterity of Lee's language and of McPhail's detailed pictures guarantee discoveries on every page. Ages 5-9.
Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
See all Editorial Reviews
