Matt McAvoy Book Review

Absolutely superb.

I loved this collection of poems entirely, without exception.  Ross is a fantastic, melodic linguist, who writes what I consider to be the perfect poems for kids – some with subtle moral messages, some educational, but mostly just plain fun.  They are all quite lovely, rhyming simply yet eloquently, with a vocabulary enviable to most “grown up” writing.  Ross creates poems about marriage; about animals; about fruit; about bank robbers; about bubble gum… in fact, anything which takes his fancy, and I can just imagine him stopping abruptly as he walks down the street, to grab his notepad to jot down some random thought he has just had, or at a bus stop, window-gazing at work.  He uses words as if they are glue-stick and coloured paper, and if missing a particular colour – or in this case a word – he just makes one up, and it is invariably always perfection.  The same goes for the beautifully colourful cartoon illustrations, of which this book is crammed full.  If you like poetry, no matter how big or how little you are, you must read this collection; it is a class in verse (for one great example of this, read “Captain Skivvy” – a rhyme which sums up everything good about this book).

There is something for the grown-ups, too, like “Check In” and “P.T.B.D.”; quite a few about sickness, in fact – probably when Ross did some of his most prolific work.  There is even the odd morbid or melancholy piece - such as “Do Something” and “Strong”, yet still, even those fizz and bubble with fun.

I enjoyed every last moment – every last word, rhyme and comma – reading the entire collection with one beaming smile after another, and more than the occasionally chuckle.  It made me think of my favourite toy as a child, even though I can’t actually remember what that was, and made me wish that I was a kid reading them.  I would have no hesitation buying this book to read to my own young kids, and I recommend that you do the same.  Faultless and utterly satisfying.  Well done Ross: your children’s poems are a masterpiece.

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