Bound To Stay Bound

School Library Journal - 07/28/2023 Gr 2–6—This expansive, anarchic poetry collection boasts excitement, surprises, words of wisdom, absurdist digressions, and laughs galore. In the tradition of Silverstein and Prelutsky, Harris cleverly tackles themes both serious and silly, bringing cheeky levity to his philosophical turns ("The Dance of the Misfits," "The Place Where the Lost Things Go") and formal elegance to his humor ("Sometimes I Dream," "Orloc, the Destroyer"). Bouncy rhyming couplets in Seussian anapestic tetrameter are paired with Tsurumi's cartoonish black-and-green digital illustrations. Metatextual jiggery-pokery abounds: footnotes flip the meaning of the accompanying verse; a numerical poem unfolds across the bottom of each page; early on, a news bulletin announces an incoming meteor, which strikes more than 70 pages later, obliterating the collection's title poem. At one point, the author's children take over and present their own "book-within-a-book." Not every comedic bit lands; for instance, "The Road to an 'Aha!,'" written along the winding path of a maze, saddles readers with the twin difficulties of deciphering a byzantine typeface and turning the book (or their heads) 43 times. All in good fun, but the prosaic, overly broad message about uncertainty is hardly worth the effort. The poem does reappear in a conventional layout later on—placing it directly after its confusing first iteration could have helped. Sprinkled amid the wild shenanigans are such deceptively complex topics as paradoxically expressing independence by resisting the ubiquitous advice to "be yourself" and the eternal temptation to procrastinate. VERDICT An appealingly ridiculous book, recommended for poetry and humor fans.—Jonah Dragan - Copyright 2023 Publishers Weekly, Library Journal and/or School Library Journal used with permission.

Booklist - 07/23/2023 *Starred Review* This companion to Harris’ I’m Just No Good at Rhyming (2017) kicks off with positive tenacity: “World, watch out! I’m on my way, / And NOTHING’s stopping me today!” But the slapstick windup, “I cannot fail! I’ll NEVER LOS . . . E / Whoops, I didn’t tie my shoes,” sets up readers for more hilarity in this mostly rhyming collection of poems. Silly takes on parents, siblings, school, growing up, and other tried-and-true topics for young readers are paired with more outlandish scenarios, from a valentine to someone you don’t care about to an elderly caveman complaining about the younger generation’s new fire technology (“They sit for hours, every night / Just gazing at the firelight. / They watch a burning log or bush . . . / It’s turning all their brains to mush!”). It’s not just the subject matter, though, that’s sure to bring a laugh. Harris plays with poetic forms, even combining a limerick, haiku, and villanelle into one poem; becomes meta, introducing a book of poems within this book; qualifies page numbers, such as “Blackjack!” for 21 and “The Number That Robinson Sported” for 42; and, from the start, maintains a running gag about a meteor that tears through the poems. His jaunty rhymes will continue to delight the next generation of Shel Silverstein and Jon Scieszka fans. - Copyright 2023 Booklist.