No More Poems! A Book in Verse That Just Gets Worse

Manic energy slops over the rim of this comic verse collection by singer-songwriter Miller. Most of the 20-odd poems address evergreen childhood themes—the wielding of a colored marker to feign illness and avoid school (“I should be better by 3:25”), the bedtime resistance poem (“I’m not a baby any... SNORE”), and bodily effluvia (“You’re building a smell/ That’s designed to repel”). By contrast, several longer poems investigate family relationships with some nuance, like the ballad about the rebellion staged by a cowed baseball coach’s son (“Today there’s something different, though/ Joe’s eyes are dad-defying”), and a boy’s reflections on his famous rock star dad: “He’s got a lot of fans and stuff/ But me, I am not one.” Illustrations by Santat (After the Fall) fuel the fun: the purple-pox creator is seen in tight, fish-eye-style close-up, thermometer protruding from her mouth; the reluctant bed-goer is attached to a medieval-looking orthodontic appliance. Elsewhere, bubbles float up from bathtubs: “Eat some beans for dinner/ Make some bubbles for yourself!” Though the rhyme and meter clank in spots, hilarity runs high; classroom readalouds could become uproarious. Ages 4–8. [em](Mar.) [/em]