The Wonder Book (review)

This playful collection offers silly poems, amusing word games, and even punny axioms in light-hearted array. Some entries focus on daily life ("Pancake College" treats a breakfast-making dad), while others are more fictionalized ("Brat City" chronicles a visit to a metropolis of pure bratdom); a sizeable number are riffs on familiar works ("It Could Be Verse" comprises several goofily homophonic retakes on familiar songs and rhymes, while the title of "The Less Famous Friends of Mary Mack" speaks for itself). The verse is unfortunately weak on the technical side, with scansion frequently faltering and rhymes often forced, problems particularly apparent in the longer original poems. There's real cleverness in the wordplay, though, and an endearing jollity in the inclusive silliness and the easygoing variety of a book that moves cheerfully from a retake on the periodic table ("For Those Who Periodically Need Reminding about Table Manners") to lists of things you can and can't run with ("Clarification") to an exploration of terms for farting in different languages ("A Rose by Any Other Name"). The layout, matte white pages decorated with lively, noodly line drawings, often of cavorting kids, is happily informal without being babyish. The collective approach allows kids to dip in and out and find tasty tidbits, and many of the entries will be drolly suitable for reading aloud or reciting as well. The book concludes with a frustratingly nonfunctional but amusingly silly index that provides page references for "key words" and "key images."