This fully illustrated book is a must-read for kids and grown-ups who never really grew up.
Be prepared to hold your nose as the Phantom Pumper strikes again. Stare in awe at the giant snail. Feel for Harry the Rat as he desperately tries to find a friend. And dodge the ogres as they attempt to snotify anyone nearby. Some of the characters are nice. Some aren’t. You decide!
The Witch With The Wonky Broomstick is a great book to encourage youth to love poetry.
" A set of children's poems who will appreciate the humour"
Reviewer: Angel for Bookangel.
The book has a nice cover with a table of contents linked to each of the poems, though the individual poems are not linked back to the contents. Each of the poems is neatly set out with title and associated image to give a little visual colour to each of them.
The author introduces himself with the first poem, a short, quirky four line stanza. While it flows and the author's surname was the only true break as I could not pronounce it, it did show one issue that is the lack of punctuation. Each stanza has a full stop at the end, but the commas that usually ends lines are absent as is the full stop on the second lines of stanzas one and three. The rhyme scheme is a straight 2 & 4 style, and read out loud it runs well. While the poems are humorous and inoffensive, by the second poem, I had seen one comma.
Each poem starts short and easy to follow, but in places the flow breaks with long sentences, perhaps due to issues with the meaning and constraints of the form and the use of "friend-el-eee" to force a rhyme is strained. The subject matter of the poems is puerile and contains plenty of toilet humour. There is little in the collection for adults, but as this is for children, that means it is perfect for it's audience and should keep them well-entertained. There are some lines which are not appreciated. "Acting like a girl, made me feel so daft." is not a message to share. Finally, he does ask for a review request, which is amusingly in poetry as well.
From horrid children to all sorts of monsters, the topic of each one varies and with over twenty poems, there is plenty of reading material, certainly if used for reading to younger children at night, who are likely to appreciate them.
" A set of children's poems who will appreciate the humour"
Reviewer: Angel for Bookangel.
A selection of poems meant for children and those reading on their own, this is great.
The witch and monster poems are ideal for halloween, but the rest of them, e.g. about a three-legged dog, or a boy who drinks too much water, would be good for any time of year. Some of the school ones, like the one about reading in front of a class, will be really familiar to its target audience, and people outside it. There are a lot of bodily function jokes in here, and I think it snot very funny. If your child is into that, they will love this book.
The formatting is simple, a bold title, the poem in stanzas and an illustration at the end. Each poem starts on a new page, and I really can't fault it. The illustrations are great for its age-group, which I would say are primary school age reading with parents or even alone, or possibly big kids of any age given how much some of our members were laughing.
A really good book to keep children amused for hours. Rating:3
