Hypnotize a Tiger: Poems About Just About Everything

Brown takes several conventions--such as celebration of the outlier and weird animals--and gives them fresh energy. A Greek chorus much given to puns is located along the bottom margin, where creatures comment on the poems and add their own. Brown is a superb craftsman, with jazzy rhythms and a gift for embedded rhymes. Jolie laide drawings add to the joyous mood.

This collection ends with an invitation to write your own poetry, but actually the whole book is such an invitation. Brown takes several conventions -- such as the celebration of the outlier (the girl who won't say the word berry: "Huckles and strawbs / I gobble in gobs. / For stuffing it's crans that I use"), weird animals (pigeon frogs; the underwaterutabaga), and complaints about school (the day the gym teachers turn into vampires) -- and gives them fresh energy. He even infuses the yucky-foods trope with original twists (the Loofah Torte is particularly startling). A Greek chorus much given to puns is located along the bottom margin, where creatures comment on the poems and add their own. Brown is a superb craftsman, with jazzy rhythms that get your whole body moving and a gift for embedded rhymes: "Very shy, and extremely rare, / the Massachusetts Camera Bear / stays aware of the local area / through landscape photography." A footnote clarifies, "Also known as the Kodakodiak bear." Jolie laide black-and-white drawings add to the jauntiness and the welcoming, joyous mood. Lear for our times. sarah ellis