Sunday 22 September 2013

The Monster Sale

The Monster Sale: Poems by Brian Moses (Walker Books)
PB RRP $12.95
ISBN 9781847803665
Reviewed by Anastasia Gonis

Brian Moses’ interesting collection opens with the title poem, and continues with equally exciting and gut-wrenching things that children love to drool about. But the collection isn’t only about monsters and ghoulish things. It has a tremendous variety of extremely clever, word-bending poems about animals, inanimate objects and crazy things like hiccups and school poems.

Writing poetry for children is a challenge. For some it appears to come naturally, but when they appear easy that is when construction has been worked hard on.  Moses’ poems are witty, lively and interesting, and they are sure to encourage children to read poetry due to the clever use of words and sound.

There’s always a favourite in every collection, and the clever word play in Tyres ‘Do tyres get tired of the road?’ is an example of how words can be used and re-used in various contexts. A lot of that happens in this book.

The 43 poems in this creative list of rhyming and free verse are thought-provoking and entertaining, and certainly the stuff that children thirst after. Ideal for the 4-100 age group.

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