A Voweller's Bestiary
[ Lipogram: a composition from which the writer rejects all words that contain a certain letter or letters. ]
JonArno Lawson, addict of wordplay and lover of children's poetry, has created a collection of lipograms written for children. The idea behind A Voweller's Bestiary is a simple one: an alphabet book based on vowel combinations, rather than o …
Black Stars in a White Night Sky
Black Stars in a White Night Sky, Lawson’s second book of poetry for children, includes fractonyms, concretes, as well as short lyrics and poems that don’t rhyme. Lawson stretches the boundaries of what is normally thought of as “children’s poetry,” but not at the expense of the book’s entertainment value or clarity. The poems are writt …
Down in the Bottom of the Bottom of the Box
Welcome to the world of JonArno Lawson, where sound rules supreme. It's a bizarre world, where wolves live on the moon, bears inhabit the sun and bleating lambs get stuck in traffic jams. Here Sleeping Beauty is an insomniac, Little Red Riding Hood is a wolf and Snow White just needed a friend to tell her to be wary of strangers.
The Truth
There is an important truth;
that seems both consistent and constant to me:
The truth is that the truth is never
What anybody wants it to be.
Man in the Moon-Fixer's Mask, The
Destined to be a bedtime read-out-loud favourite, this highly accessible but unusual book of wordplay fun for children brings back to life the long lost oddball spirit of the best of Ogden Nash and Hillaire Belloc. It brims over with a love of language - teasing the tongue without twisting it."I liked these poemsAnd you will, tooSo buy this bookAnd …
Old MacDonald Had Her Farm
Old MacDonald had a farm like you've never seen before!
With a nod to the familiar refrain E-I-E-I-O, a day on this farm is framed by the vowels A-E-I-O-U--and sometimes Y.
Old MacDonald appears in an explosion of color and, starting with the letter A, proceeds to "saw barn planks, stack sacks, crank cranks, and whack gnats." The day progresses …
There, Devil, Eat That
A book of poems about love, false starts, family, relationships, body parts, lost friends, ancestors and origins, problems, angels, war and travels. This is Lawson's first book of adult poetry since 1999 and it shows the influence of the many intervening years he's spent writing poetry for children. His language is playful and clear - he avoids obs …
Think Again
Make sure that your heart Isn't too well-defended. Your heart is designed To be broken and mended. -- "The Heart" These quietly beautiful and surprisingly humorous four-line poems reveal the many aspects of first love -- the longing, the frustration and the joy. The poet writes not from a single point of view but instead embraces the duality of fir …