Wise Up! Wise Down! A Poetic Conversation

Gr 1-5–Two poets take turns writing poems that are accompanied by charmingly childlike line drawings. Some of the poems are philosophical, as in “Questions”: “If I lie/ on a page/ am I a word?/ If I hang/ from a branch/ am I a fruit?…O, answers/ are folly/ when questions bring bliss./ Without questions, can I exist?” Most of the works, however, have forced rhymes and baffling endings, mostly due to wordplay. For instance, in “DJ Ghost,” the narrator is a ghost at a disco until the last few lines: “Wicked crucial and all that yo!/ We skeletons have a swinging nightlife/ (in case you didn’t know)./ Yeah, when we skeletons hit the dance floor,/ bet you’d wish you were nothing but bone.” Some of the poems are clearly about politics—to a young audience, these verses will be head-scratchers. Although the artwork is whimsical, with lively illustrations of animals, many of the drawings are of kooky adults. Back matter includes poetry-writing ideas, such as writing back and forth with a friend, copying the style of a poem in one’s own words, and writing a poem in response to a picture.