Poem-mobiles: Crazy Car Poems Author: Visit Amazon's J. Patrick Lewis Page | Language: English | ISBN:
0375866906 | Format: EPUB
Poem-mobiles: Crazy Car Poems Description
From School Library Journal
K-Gr 4—The subtitle "Crazy Car Poems" correctly describes the contents of this collaboration-22 pieces of pure fanciful nonsense by two of America's cleverest and most inventive poets currently writing for young people. Offerings include a "Giant Bookmobile of Tomorrow," driven by the Gingerbread Man; a pirate-operated, ocean-going "Fish Car"; and a "Dragonwagon" that "feeds with greed on rusty bikes." The child whose dad navigates the 'Balloon Car' says "…boy, does he he get mad at me/When I call out- 'Hey, POP!' …and the elderly lady operating the first-prize, supersize 'High-Heel Car' "…wins every footrace/Then honks her shoehorn." It's quite possible that Holmes had the most fun of all creating his spot-on, detail-laden illustrations of bizarre imaginary worlds ranging from above the rooftops to beneath the sea. Parts of his digitally-colored pencil and watercolor paintings appear to be formed from mixed media: polymer clay, paper/cardboard collage, a folded sheet of lined notebook paper with a paperclip grille and ballpoint bumper. The number of clever eccentricities in the illustrations is eye-boggling. For example, in the scene accompanying 'Bathtub Car', the duck/king's 'royal throne' is the kind found in the bathroom. Younger children will like the silliness of the poems; older kids and adults will enjoy poring over the pictures. This highly entertaining collection is fun to read and will provide inspiration for youngsters trying to create their own humorous poetry.—Susan Scheps, formerly at Shaker Public Library, OH
From Booklist
Here’s a weird idea for you: poems about bizarre hybrid cars—or, as Lewis and Florian prefer, a futuristic sneak preview into what may one day rule the roads. Readers will chuckle at the sheer improbability of each conception. How about a car made out of an enormous shoe? Or one made out of paper that you can shred when it breaks down? Or a giant hot-dog car you can eat? Or a giant rolling bathtub that gets you clean as you cruise? Take, for example, the Grass Taxi: I need to mow the glass, / I should Weedwack the visor, / I’m blanketed in grass. / My wax is fertilizer. The rhymes largely keep to such easy-to-follow quatrains paving the way for readers to enjoy Holmes’ hugely inventive pencil, watercolor, and digital art. These are deliriously overimagined auto designs, often Rube Goldberg-y or steampunky in feel, with a pale palette that gives the affair an old-fashioned sheen. (The characters too look like antiquated dolls.) Unique from fin to fender. Grades K-3. --Daniel Kraus
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- Age Range: 4 - 8 years
- Grade Level: Preschool - 3
- Hardcover: 40 pages
- Publisher: Schwartz & Wade (January 7, 2014)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0375866906
- ISBN-13: 978-0375866906
- Product Dimensions: 9.9 x 10.9 x 0.5 inches
- Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
Never having been a huge poetry fan, mainly because I did not understand it, children’s poetry books like today’s title, Poem-Mobiles: Crazy Car Poems are the reason why I not only enjoy poetry, but even understanding is beginning to take hold. Crazy Car Poems could not have any better poets and illustrators than it has, and it shows. The poems are not only wonderful to read aloud, rolling off the tongue smoothly—except when laughing, which is the other great thing about Crazy Car Poems: the poems are hilarious and the illustrations are fabulous, or maybe the poems are fabulous and the illustrations are hilarious. Either way, or both ways, Crazy Car Poems is fantastic. Kids, of all ages, will love this book, especially the male species.
If you like the feel and look of a brand new car, with its clean interior, shiny body, strong chassis, oh, and that brand-new car smell, Crazy Car Poems will thrill you, because it has all those features and more. These automobiles rhyme, sing, and beat to a perfect cadence. And Crazy Car Poems are the wave of the future. Forget hybrids, electronics, sonic boom stereos, and cars that park themselves, for these cars need none of that old-fashioned nonsense to drive like a dream. Forget the Smart Car. Get a Mini-Mini-Car.
“I’m in my little motorcar—
My mini-mini-mini.
it’s itsy-bitsy-teeny-weeny,
Skinny skinny skinny.
I squeeze inside and then I ride
Some more and more and more.
But I don’t brag, for there’s a snag:
I can’t get out the door.
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