Make Magic! Do Good! (review)

Nearly fifty rhymed verses appear in this initially self-published collection of poetry. Subjects range from kid-appealing topics such as unicorns, rainbows, and dragons to more conceptual matters ("Try," "Enemies, "New Start"), and the style is friendly and colloquial; visuals are inviting, with each spread partnering an airy visual vignette and a poem. The strongest poems here are the short ones, such as "Robots" and "Sunshine" ("She blew a kiss/ it missed my face/ and drifted into outer space . . . "), that bring pithy wit. Longer ones, though, often shift meter wildly, making them hard to read and harder to read aloud, and lines are often inflated with filler material just to get to a rhyme. The tone tips into the sentimental and the didactic, and while the lessons in many of the verses are worthy, they're also clichéd, adult-inflected, and occasionally plain peculiar ("Amanda the Panda," for instance, uses a panda's eating of bamboo as a story about destructive consumption of resources). Adults keen on strong messages may find some of these verses to their taste, but this is territory better covered by the likes of Silverstein, Prelutsky, and Florian. Vignette illustrations have a pleasing graphic snap, with linework hatching that recalls linocuts and a James Marshall-esque rotundity to the figures.