She Sells Sea Shells: World Class Tongue Twisters

It won’t only be the words that get readers tongue-tied—these wacky, witty, and wonderful illustrations by Seymour Chwast will have everyone speechless with delight!  Chwast, the artist and co-founder of the infamous Pushpin Studios, had an enormous influence on design and illustration everywhere.  Now, he brings his unique perspective to 25 of the most entertaining tongue-twisters ever—some familiar and others less so.  He’s created vibrant, original work that constantly surprises and amuses, whether it’s his Heidi-like maiden with a small figure skiing down her dress in “My Swiss miss misses Mississippi” or his “merry moose from Manitoba” happily “wearing moccasins from Minnetonka.”  No one will be able to resist the challenge of trying to wrap his or her tongue around such twisters as “Giddy gladiators grow gladiolas” and “If Shep chews shoes what shoes will he choose?” 

Attractively packaged, and with a debossed cover, this is Chwast’s first original book in years.  It’s sure to become a favorite in every family’s library, whether to stimulate some fun verbal stumbles or just to pour over with pleasure.

Drawing on his distinguished career in graphic design, Chwast's (The Twelve Circus Rings)visual exposé of tongue twisters teems with humor and cheek, starting with the debossed cover's inset art of a woman in a beach hat before a table's worth of shells strung with price tags. Mouths with twisting tongues line the endpapers, while the interior illustration for the eponymous tongue twister features that same woman, now in mid-stride away from the table, a Sold Out sign the only object upon it. The lines and use of color are posterlike, closer to Chwast's work for adults than to his more fluid picture book illustration. The humor can also be goofy or dark. In Cheery chickens cooking in the kitchen, a stoic oversize chicken perches in a cooking pot, red flames shooting up from below, a lid menacing it from above. Though many of the tongue twisters may be unfamiliar and several seem outdated (winding wristwatches?), the punchy illustrations capture their buoyant essence. Few will be able to resist saying them aloud. All ages. (Oct.)
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