Review: Wing Nuts: Screwy Haiku

by Paul B. Janeczko and J. Patrick Lewis, illustrated by Tricia Tusa. This book is really delightful. Janecko, Lewis, and Tusa have teamed up to create some very clever senyru, a type of haiku focusing on people that is clever and funny that is brilliantly illustrated. The watercolor pictures tell a story woven on top of the haiku, as a boy chases his blue ball down a rabbit hole and across an increasingly silly landscape where hippos are couch potatoes and cows wear purple boots. Here are a few of my favorite senryu:

Swift punishment
for drinking from milk carton...
mouthful of curdles

Irksome mosquito,
kindly sing your evening song
in my brother's ear

Noah Webster had
no choice except to put
the cart before the horse

On every page spread an increasingly bewildered brown-skinned boy follows his bouncing blue ball through scenes of disorder and hilarity. He is finally ushered out a window by a jester, trips over the marshmallow heads of powdered and be-wigged ladies, climbs a ladder and emerges back on the grass with his playful pup. Phew! This book is a giggle fest for sure.

A senryu goes
bouncing along into...
a giant poet-tree!

The Friday Poetry Round up is at Two Writing Teachers today. Go take a look!