First published in the US 2014
Original text 1978 in Dutch
Eerdman Books for Young Readers
32 pages
Goodreads
rating: 4.42
My rating: Poetry 2 Illustrations 4
Endpapers: Simple sweeps of black (feront) and white (back) ink with a simple figure drawing and "a" on the front and "Z" on the back
Title Page: Dribbles of ink :)
Illustrations (see my comments)
Sample; first lines from the first poem in the book:
A fairy tale author I know
starts work every day when the roosters crow.
He writes quickly, he writes without hitches
about fairies and elves and hobgolblins and witches.
He writes about princesses, princes, and kings,
and keeps going till six when the dinner bell rings.....
you get the gist......
My
comments: :I can't say I particularly enjoy Schmidt's poetry. It reminds me too much of kids that write poems and insist they have to rhyme. However, if they were translated from Dutch, that's not her fault, is it? I'm thinking that they didn't translate well. So that's NOT Schmidt's fault, which makes the poems extremely difficult to rate. BUT, I LOVE the illustrations. They're simple but with lots and lots of lines and squiggles and zentangly-like doodles.
Goodreads: Their summary is in Dutch, so I copy here the review of a reader: Twelve quirky and imaginative poems show the world in a very different world in this collection that looks at common occurrences from a unique lens. For instance, "Nice and Naughty" describes how one mischievous tot simply cannot bear to behave in the proper fashion and prefers to behave badly. The accompanying illustration for that poem, created through drawing and collage, shows how she has tied the mouth of a dog completely shut and tied the left and right shoes of several men and women together. Daringly, there are a couple of double-page spreads that consist solely of art.
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