Poem-mobiles

Starred review from November 4, 2013
Lewis and Florian bring new meaning to “hybrid automobile” in clever and concise poems packed with wordplay, puns, and double entendre. An impish array of people, monsters, and animals inhabit a loony, on-the-go world with such exotic vehicular mashups as the Fish Car, High-Heel Car, Balloon Car, and Caterpillar Cab. Holmes’s spry, mixed-media illustrations in lime greens, pinks, and metallic tones have a smooth, almost taffylike veneer, and handily match the witty and wondrous mood of the poems. Where the poets envision a post–fossil fuel automobile (“Here’s what we will be driving/ When oil and gasoline/ Are just a distant memory—/ The family li-mooo-sine”), he pictures a cow-drawn station wagon in a futuristic farmscape where a sheep peers at a neighboring farm planet through a giant telescope. A birdlike royal rides in the Bathtub Car, an ornate chariot chauffeured by a duckling: “With hot-water heating/ And porcelain seating,/ The Bathtub is speeding.” It’s all but sure to have readers dreaming up their own wild contraptions for land, sea, sky, and space. Ages 4–8. Illustrator’s agent: Rebecca Sherman, Writers House.

February 1, 2014

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

Copyright 2014 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

December 1, 2013
Limitless possibilities for future car designs are imagined in a collection of free-wheeling verses. Everything from food items to animals to bathtubs and more are the inspirations for these strange vehicles. A paper car can be shredded if it breaks down, a bathtub car keeps you clean as you go, and a hot-dog car can be eaten at the end of the ride. A few of the verses refer either explicitly or obliquely to alternative fuels. There's a battery-powered "Eel-ectric Car" and unused fossil-fueled wrecks in "Jurassic Park(ing)," and in "23rd-Century Motors," oil and gas are totally passe. With a few exceptions the verses flow naturally with easy rhymes. Oddly, the first four lines of the introductory poem are awkward and not indicative of the mood and swing of the following lines and the remainder of the poems. But Lewis and Florian are both masters at creating lighthearted, fun-filled, breezy poems, and they do not disappoint in this joint venture. The text is placed as if on a stained and folded slip of paper, which is surrounded by Holmes' highly imaginative, bright and lively illustrations, rendered in pencil and watercolors with digital colors added. Endpapers are tire-tracked, and the contents page matches line drawings to the titles. Young readers will almost certainly be inspired to create their own wacky cars. (Picture book/poetry. 6-9)

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December 15, 2013
Grades K-3 Here's a weird idea for you: poems about bizarre hybrid carsor, 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.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)