Making Friends with Frankenstein: A Book of Monstrous Poems and Pictures

With a dash of Monty Python and a whiff of Jack Prelutsky, McNaughton's ( Who's That Banging on the Ceiling? ) deliciously outrageous poems are filled with wacky cartoon characters, nimble puns and clever spoofs. Three blue ghosts perform a ``phantomine''; ``in the sandbox, making trouble'' are ``seven witches, hubble, bubble. / (Sandwitches!).'' An ``Ode to the Invisible Man'' is featured on an otherwise blank page, while an ``Abominable Verse'' about a yeti (which ``rhymes so neatly with spaghetti'') is illustrated by a view of the preposterous beast guzzling wine and gobbling pasta. Both poems and art are wickedly comic rather than horribly offensive, though there is plenty of noise (``slobber, chomp, slurp, gulp!'') and an abundance of gross mischievousness. Frankenstein's monster is chopped to bits to the refrain ``May he rest in pieces,'' and a thug eats a cockroach sandwich (``Hate the taste / But love the crunch!''). From the Dracula endpapers to the romp through Jekyll and Hyde Park, McNaughton's saucy good fun contains enough comic-strip verve and zany comedy to liven up even the ``biggest monster party / That there's ever monster been!'' Ages 4-up. (May)