Making Friends with Frankenstein: A Book of Monstrous Poems and Pictures - Softcover

McNaughton, Colin

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0763618918 ISBN 13: 9780763618919

Publisher: Candlewick, 2002

Synopsis

A hilarious compendium of nonsense rhymes and verse presents a variety of ridiculous monsters, insults, aliens, and puns, including such treasures as "Another Poem to Send to Your Worst Enemy" and "A Farewell to Dracula." Reprint.

About this title

From Booklist

Gr. 2-4, younger and older for reading aloud. Full of puns, parodies, and gross insults, McNaughton's nonsense verse and comic illustrations wallow in slime and slobber and monstrous distortion. He takes all our delicious, shivery fears and reinvents them. His play is nowhere more fantastic than when he's taking our most banal phrases literally. "Make a friend" takes place in a laboratory. The same kind of mischief erupts in word and watercolor picture with "wet blanket" and "cold feet" and "I've lost my head" and "May he rest in pieces." Much of the pleasure is in the sound of words and their rhyme, whether it's a chant to send to your worst enemy or a celebration of the ooze-zombie from the slime-pits of grunge. For those who understand the references to things like Jekyll and Hyde, there's extra fun; but it doesn't take long to see the joke about the cross-eyed Cyclops or the yeti that rhymes so neatly with spaghetti. A must for Halloween, but this is a collection that kids will laugh over and repeat all year long, especially if they like their "human beans on toast." Hazel Rochman

From School Library Journal

Grade 3-6-This medley of monster-mayhem poems is full of funny sounds and furies and reads aloud with lots of bounce. The volume is decorated with cartoon beasts of all kinds-dinosaurs, cyclopses, giant pigs, overgrown alligators-cavorting with and grimacing at pop-eyed (and sometimes just as monstrous) people. Reminiscent of the Dahl/Blake partnership that created Roald Dahl's Revolting Rhymes (Knopf, 1983), the poems include an array of disgusting bodily functions that kids will find hilarious. Like the verses of Spike Milligan, there's a nasty wit at work, too, much of which may escape the sensibilities of young readers. Also, they may be puzzled by the Briticisms and occasionally sophisticated wordplay. Some of the verses don't quite scan, but that's redeemed by their sheer vitality and the fun of their typographic variety. There's violence galore, but that's what monsters do, after all, and mostly the kids win out.
Marjorie Lewis, Heathcote School, Scarsdale, NY
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Candlewick
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0763618918
• ISBN 13: 9780763618919
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 96
• Illustrator: McNaughton Colin