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Your Kids Need a Laugh? Try the Short, Quirky Poems in This Book
I’M JUST NO GOOD AT RHYMING
And Other Nonsense for Mischievous Kids and Immature Grown-Ups
By Chris Harris. Illustrated by Lane Smith.
192 pp. Little, Brown and Company. $19.99.
(Ages 6 and up)
In this sometimes unkind climate we find ourselves surrounded by, laughing to keep from crying is more than a maxim. It’s a requirement for sanity. As Langston Hughes, one of America’s finest poets, wrote: “Like a welcome summer rain, humor may suddenly cleanse and cool the earth, the air and you.”
Sure, parents might turn to YouTube’s “Dad Jokes” or Jerry Seinfeld’s “Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee” for release and sustenance — but for young people, the rhythm and rhyme of poetry written specifically for them still delivers jolts of much-needed joy and happiness. From Shel Silverstein’s quirky verse, to the silly dilly songs and poems of Alan Katz, to more recent rhyming picture books like Sue Fliess’s romping holiday parody “We Wish for a Monster Christmas,” short and funny wordplay continues to be a sure shot. Now, you can add Chris Harris and Lane Smith’s “I’m Just No Good at Rhyming” to this pantheon.
Right off the bat, Harris sets the tone for the nonsense that will ensue: “I’m just no good at rhyming / It makes me feel so bad / I’m just no good at rhyming / And that’s why I’m so blue.” This sleight of hand begs for us to read aloud, loudly and confidently, and we do, becoming less reader and more participant in a whimsical call-and-response. In “The Good-Child Test,” he writes, “I used special ink on this poem’s last line / That some children see and some don’t / If you’re a good child, then you’ll read it just fine — ” Then, of course, he leaves the final line blank. The set up is so well done that we know it’s coming, and we feel good because we do.
This debut collection shines when Harris is concise and whimsically original, as in the poems “Worst. Birthday. Party. Ever.” and “Toasted Knight for Lunch Again?” (“Mama Dragon / Ate Sir Tom / And gave her child / Sir Gustav. / Baby said, / ’No armor, Mom —/ I want him / With the crust off!’”) Though many of the longer poems excel in both style and storytelling, a few seem to lag. Nonetheless it’s worth getting all the way through; the book includes clever little notes, sidebars, apologies and epilogues that will keep you in stitches. Even the front matter and jacket flap are upside-down amusing.
Continuing in the tradition of his “It’s a Book” and “The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales,” Lane Smith makes his trademark oil and acrylic images seem to jump off the page (and make us laugh even more). “I’m Just No Good at Rhyming” is the perfect canvas for Smith’s simple and absurd sepia-toned mischief. Together, this Hollywood writer (Harris was an executive producer of “How I Met Your Mother”) and award-winning illustrator (Smith has received two Caldecott Honors) might just make all of us — the kids and the grown-ups — smile again.
Kwame Alexander is the author of the Newbery Medal-winning novel “The Crossover” and its forthcoming sequel, “Rebound.”
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