Jenny Carey’s picture book Fun Poems for Your Child offers one-page poems on several child-friendly subjects accompanied by color illustrations.
The 11 poems, told from a first-person perspective, cover ground dear to the hearts of children: imaginative forays featuring pirates, fairies and dragons, as well as everyday activities such as going to the park, feeding ducks and flying kites. The playful spirit of childhood and a sense of joy are evident throughout.
The poems mostly use simple, obvious rhymes. In the first entry, “Circus,” the acts are seen through the eyes of a young visitor: “Walking on wires, such a great height/ Makes me gasp and gives me a fright!” Most couplets in “Circus” end similarly, but there’s a sudden shift to non-rhyming lines ” before resuming the former pattern. While these variations provide a change of pace, the switch throws off the rhythm.
Other poems, such as “Puppets,” arrange words awkwardly to make the thought fit the rhyme scheme: “I have other puppets, Punch and Judy, not my best./ They are too violent, yes, I do not jest!/ Tom and Jerry I have and I’ve played with them times/ Tom chases Jerry who escapes, but later Tom finds.”
The art is cheerful and largely effective, but shortcuts such as repeating an armored soldier’s image several times in the illustration for “Dragon” are noticeable and distracting. In “Fairies,” the text describes a male fairy “with pointy ears and hair of gold,” while the illustration shows a dark-haired male fairy with human ears. Minor punctuation errors also appear throughout.
While these flaws diminish its entertainment value, the book is largely enjoyable nonetheless. Some revision, however, is required to create a more polished presentation.
Also available as an ebook.
