“Never let a kitten sharpen claws on your balloon.”

Continuing our forays into new poetry, next up is Kids Pick The Funniest Poems, which is a collection of about 100 or so poems, selected by 300 elementary school children and collected for this book by Bruce Lansky. Aside from a handful of familiar names – Jack Prelutsky, Ogden Nash, Shel Silverstein, Dr. Seuss, the previously mentioned Judith Viorst – most of the poems come from new-to-me sources, but they’re almost all American or Canadian poets. Some names include Jeff Moss, Maxine Jeffris, Phlil Bolsta, Joyce Armor, and Lansky himself.

Arranged into different topics – self, families, school, advice, monsters, disasters, friends – the book is well-organized and easy for kids to use independently. My niece and I have been using it during phone calls – she’ll read me one of her favorites (tells me the title and author, then I look it up), and, thankfully, there have been plenty of good selections to choose from. She’s also discovered a few different varieties of poetry formats – her newest favorite is the onomatopoeic Clatter, by Joyce Armor, which she can “roar, fizzle, splat, moo, hiss.” her way through. It’s a good introduction to poetry as a whole, to new & interesting poets if they’ve already got a few under their belt, and just to the fun of nonsense words all cobbled together in meaningful ways. Complete with tongue-in-cheek illustrations by Stephen Carpenter, and first in a series of child-selected poetry books put together by Lansky, it’s another fun addition to any poetry shelf.

(The title of this review is taken from the poem Rules to Live by, by Linda Knaus, which also imparts the very wise advice that you should “Never let a chimpanzee use Grandma’s waterpick.” Which I think we all know is very true.)