MY DOG IS A CARROT

British comic Hegley composes nearly 50 eccentric poems about cornflakes, bullies and other seemingly unrelated topics. All his poems rely on surprise, whether in terms of events or skewed, stuttering meter. The free-verse "Grandad's Glasses," for instance, may blindside readers: "one day/ he couldn't see TV anymore/ so he didn't need his glasses/ and there was no point in burying them with him." Wry first-person poems describe a darkly amusing childhood. In "A Boy's Best Gift," a boy begs his father for a dog and gets an empty kennel ("I crawled inside and became the very dog I had requested./ I became my own best friend"). Later, a carrot-shaped concrete poem appears in yellow print on an orange page ("I've got a dog that's more/ like a carrot than a dog/.../ and it's all/ orange/ and/ crunchy"), and the volume's final poem, "My dog is a dog," suggests a happy ending for the speaker. While a few crude line drawings adorn the margins, multicolored pages and bold layouts stand in for illustration. Although Hegley's verses at times come across as nonsense, with their absurd humor ("Me Poem" consists of the word "me," in various sizes) and unpredictable wordplay ("the octopus got a nasty electric shocktopus/ and had to call the octodoctopus"), along the way these peculiar pieces provide serious insight into a contentious family life; even the silly title takes on meaning. This experimental work is not to every taste, but dogged readers will warm to it. Ages 6-up. (Mar.)