  | Full Text Reviews: Booklist - 12/15/2013 Here’s a weird idea for you: poems about bizarre hybrid cars—or, as Lewis and Florian prefer, a futuristic sneak preview into what may one day rule the roads. Readers will chuckle at the sheer improbability of each conception. How about a car made out of an enormous shoe? Or one made out of paper that you can shred when it breaks down? Or a giant hot-dog car you can eat? Or a giant rolling bathtub that gets you clean as you cruise? Take, for example, the Grass Taxi: I need to mow the glass, / I should Weedwack the visor, / I’m blanketed in grass. / My wax is fertilizer. The rhymes largely keep to such easy-to-follow quatrains paving the way for readers to enjoy Holmes’ hugely inventive pencil, watercolor, and digital art. These are deliriously overimagined auto designs, often Rube Goldberg-y or steampunky in feel, with a pale palette that gives the affair an old-fashioned sheen. (The characters too look like antiquated dolls.) Unique from fin to fender. - Copyright 2013 Booklist. School Library Journal - 02/01/2014 K-Gr 4—The subtitle "Crazy Car Poems" correctly describes the contents of this collaboration-22 pieces of pure fanciful nonsense by two of America's cleverest and most inventive poets currently writing for young people. Offerings include a "Giant Bookmobile of Tomorrow," driven by the Gingerbread Man; a pirate-operated, ocean-going "Fish Car"; and a "Dragonwagon" that "feeds with greed on rusty bikes." The child whose dad navigates the 'Balloon Car' says "…boy, does he he get mad at me/When I call out- 'Hey, POP!' …and the elderly lady operating the first-prize, supersize 'High-Heel Car' "…wins every footrace/Then honks her shoehorn." It's quite possible that Holmes had the most fun of all creating his spot-on, detail-laden illustrations of bizarre imaginary worlds ranging from above the rooftops to beneath the sea. Parts of his digitally-colored pencil and watercolor paintings appear to be formed from mixed media: polymer clay, paper/cardboard collage, a folded sheet of lined notebook paper with a paperclip grille and ballpoint bumper. The number of clever eccentricities in the illustrations is eye-boggling. For example, in the scene accompanying 'Bathtub Car', the duck/king's 'royal throne' is the kind found in the bathroom. Younger children will like the silliness of the poems; older kids and adults will enjoy poring over the pictures. This highly entertaining collection is fun to read and will provide inspiration for youngsters trying to create their own humorous poetry.—Susan Scheps, formerly at Shaker Public Library, OH - Copyright 2014 Publishers Weekly, Library Journal and/or School Library Journal used with permission. Loading...
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