You probably know Where the Sidewalk Ends as a favorite of young peoples' poetry. It is the book that introduced poems like 'Smart,' about a child who traded his father's dollar down to five pennies, all the while convinced he was arranging clever deals ('My dad gave me one dollar bill, 'Cause I'm his smartest son, And I swapped it for two shiny quarters, 'Cause two is more than one!). It also includes poems in the form of colorful cautionary tales, such as 'Sarah Cynthia Stout Would Not Take the Garbage Out' and 'The Dirtiest Man in the World' that take the results of failing to perform ordinary chores to their extremes. The illustrations add to meaning, often adding twists to the text of the poem, such as in 'The Loser,' when someone has lost his head, and only the reader knows that his head is 'this rock' on which the narrator sits. The poems present lively and sometimes sarcastic takes on the every day as well as the fantastic.
Date read: 12/31/2009
ISBN-10: 0060256680
ISBN-13: 9780060256685
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