Walking the Bridge of Your Nose: Wordplay Poems Rhymes

A brightly illustrated and economically priced compendium of tongue-twisters, riddles, parodies and puns, this anthology contains enough silliness to last through dozens of readings. ``Be prepared,'' says Rosen (Poems for the Very Young) ``to be baffled, bamfoozled, bewitched, and bedazzled''-a warning well heeded as this playful book does all the above with enormous glee. While the large-size book is sprinkled lightly with poems (by the likes of Eve Merriam, Jack Prelutsky et al.), many of its pages are given over to ingenious wordplay. One poem is composed from names found in a Toronto telephone directory: ``Liddle Mees Muffitt/ Saa Tonner Tufford/ Eaton Herr Corzon Waye''; another reasons that since ``the plural of that is those,'' is ``the plural of rat then rose?'' Cheese's quirky watercolors with their mustached men and frizzle-haired girls vary considerably in complexity and design, but are energetic and cheerfully action-filled. Ages 7-10. (Sept.)