Tim DeRoche

This was a fun collection of poems. Think Shel Silverstein, geared for middle graders and older. There were a few words I had to look up, so I'm sure younger readers will need to as well. For the most part they're fun poems, with illustrations to match. They're a bit offbeat, which I think will appeal to younger readers. Adults who enjoyed offbeat reads when they were kids will likely find they're still kids at heart when reading this. I'll definitely be recommending this to my friends with kids who are the right ages!… (mais)

Silly funny poems for sharing with primary school students. A fish wants to be eaten by the king. A neighborhood kid advertises mudshakes with hollandaise, guaranteed to give you the flu. A prince learns just in time that slaying the beast that he was told killed his father would be a mistake. A Jabberwock doesn't need killing, either. A character with many unlikely problems (the faucet runs lukewarm gasoline) answers the greeting "How are you?" with "Fine, thank you." And more. The poems would be funny without illustrations that manage to satisfy both my taste for baroque drawings and my taste for cartoons, but each poem gets at least one such illustration. The quality of the poems is uneven but this is a very funny book.… (mais)

Every time I went looking for a new book to read The Ballad of Huck and Miguel showed up on my radar. I admit prejudice against this book. I was prepared to start reading and close the book within 50 pages. But then I got involved with the “the full true story of how ….. Huck went on the run from the ‘thorities with a real live illegal Mexigrant”. And what a run it was. I was swept up in the calamities which befell nine-year-old Huckleberry Finn including being “almost shot by a Man with a donkeytail, almost getting killed by a gangster, making a deal with a Rapscallion, getting mixed up in a rebelution, and running always running from his Pap.

Written in the vernacular of an uneducated boy from St. Petersburg, Missouri, within a few pages it felt perfect. Huck is wise beyond his nine years and his perception of the people he meets serve him well. He is able to discern truth from “hocus” and has “too much of a conscience” to outright steal only allowing himself to borrow what he needs from time to time. He is the kid you want to have a conversation with and hear his “take” on the world and its inhabitants.

Totally entertaining, exceptionally insightful, I could not put this down and finished it in one sitting.

Thank you NetGalley and Redtail Press for a copy… (mais)