His Shoes Were Far Too Tight

by Edward Lear, Daniel Pinkwater (Editor), Calef Brown (Illustrator)

Renowned author Daniel Pinkwater and best-selling poet and artist Calef Brown team up to champion the ridiculous! These endlessly fascinating and imaginative poems are as fresh and delightful today as they were when Edward Lear wrote them more than a hundred years ago—from "The Owl and the Pussycat" to "The Pobble Who Has No Toes." This charming book proves that, sometimes, there's nothing children need more than a healthy dose of nonsense!

Genres: Poetry, Picture Books, Childrens, Humor, Ebooks

40 pages, Hardcover

First published March 2, 2011

About the author

Edward Lear was an English artist, illustrator, musician, author and poet, who is known mostly for his literary nonsense in poetry and prose and especially his limericks, a form he popularised.
His principal areas of work as an artist were threefold: as a draughtsman employed to make illustrations of birds and animals; making coloured drawings during his journeys, which he reworked later, sometimes as plates for his travel books; and as a (minor) illustrator of Alfred Tennyson's poems.
As an author, he is known principally for his popular nonsense collections of poems, songs, short stories, botanical drawings, recipes and alphabets. He also composed and published twelve musical settings of Tennyson's poetry.

Reviews

[Allie S. · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars

[Lauren · Rating 3 out of 5]

I believe this book is perfect for the pictures itself. The way the watercolor makes the animals look so realistic. I feel that some parts of this story were difficult to understand for me and because it is children's literature the children will be more confused. The poems themselves were silly in their own ways which make the book fun for all who read it. I love poetry books because that aren't like other books the students read. They are engaging and fun to read.

[RLL22017Julia Turnbough · Rating 3 out of 5]

His Shoe Were Far Too Tight is a collection of poems designed to illustrated ridiculousness. A young child might find the rhyming of the poems funny, however, some of the words used in the poems would have to be defined to them. This category of the poetry is considered nonsense. I would recommend this book to children ages 4-8 years old.

[Rachel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read to Lucas

[Leilani Martin · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a lovely little imaginary world!

I do think this book of poems is for children... Nevertheless, I did enjoy reading them.

[Nmcbyrne · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fun with cute illustrations.

[Child960801 · Rating 4 out of 5]

More poems by Edward Lear, including an alphabet one that wasn't in the other book. The children enjoyed it.

[Sara · Rating 3 out of 5]

And here we have another book that I never intended to read.

My 2016 reading challenge requires me to read "a book of poetry." I was going to read Sylvia Plath's Ariel, but I couldn't find a copy. Then I was going to read Jacqueline Woodson's Brown Girl Dreaming, which isn't quite a book of poetry, but is written in verse, so I figured it would count. After weeks of waiting for my hold to come in at the library, I found that there were still three people ahead of me, so there would be no way to even receive it before the end of the year. Eventually, frustrated and nearly giving up, I filtered my library's database by "genre: poetry" and "status: available." There was one book. This was it.

I'm not really a poetry kind of person. I remember when we did a whole poetry unit during my sophomore year of high school. We spent every day of English class analyzing poems. "Fill the margins with your observations," the teacher would demand. "Analyze the language. Analyze the rhyme scheme. Discuss the imagery. Why do you think the author chose to make the curtains gray? What does the fact that he references a pine tree rather than a maple tree mean?" UGH. I otherwise loved that teacher, but she absolutely killed any desire to ever read a poem again.

Can't a poem just be a poem? Can't we just appreciate it for the way it sounds and the feelings it evokes? So, obviously, with that said, I'm not going to be doing an in-depth analysis of these nonsense poems.

What I will say is that I can see how children would appreciate these poems. They are silly. The words don't always make sense. They're definitely made to be read aloud. The illustrations are cute. I probably would have enjoyed this book more as a child than I did as a twenty-six-year-old only picking it up to fulfill a checkbox on a reading challenge, but all in all, it wasn't a bad way to spend thirty minutes on a Wednesday night.

[Kelly · Rating 5 out of 5]

Edward Lear is known by many as the father of nonsense poetry. While silly poems existed before Lear started writing, his title is still well-deserved, since he wrote quite a large amount of nonsense poetry. In 1846, A Book of Nonsense, his first collection of nonsense poems was published.

As a child, Daniel Pinkwater especially enjoyed reading The Complete Nonsense of Edward Lear, which he repeatedly borrowed from his local library. Daniel has written a marvelous introduction to this collection of Edward Lear's poems, which manages to introduce the reader to Lear and to the idea of nonsense poetry in an engaging way. What follows is a collection of ten Lear poems selected by Daniel Pinkwater, including the well-known favorites, "The Owl and the Pussycat" and "The Jumblies", each of which is accompanied by illustrations done by Calef Brown, himself a poet as well as an illustrator. The quirkiness and bold color of the illustrations pairs extremely well with the often silly verses penned by Lear, and this book makes an excellent introduction to Lear's work. The book's title is derived from a recurring line in "Some Incidents in the Life of My Uncle Arly".

One of my favorite Lear words is "runcible", an invented nonsense word that seems to stand in to mean whatever Lear wants it to at any given time. It is clear that it is (a) silly and (b) an adjective, and beyond that there's no clear meaning of the word. The word appears at least twice in this collection – once in "How Pleasant to Know Mr. Lear!" and again in "The Owl and the Pussycat".

This book is an excellent introduction to nonsense poetry and to the works of Edward Lear. Highly recommended for fans of silly poems and for libraries everywhere. My thanks to the good people at Chronicle Books for sending me a review copy.

[Becky · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is my third poetry book review:

I found this book more to be one of nonsense poems and had a difficult time reading it without the sing-song tone if rhyming poems. The illustrations were done in watercolor and the faces on the animals had very human characteristics. Overall, the book is very colorful and each page had a main background color and then other brighter colors to better stand out. The pictures look to be done with paint.

The poems include, "The Pobble Who Has No Toes", "The Owl and the Pussycat", and "The Duck and the Kangaroo". Those were easier to read because they had items that were known and could relate to: duck, cat, owl, scarf, dancing by the moonlight, etc. Even if it was strange that a cat and owl would be dancing together, it still made sense because we could picture it. On the other hand, the poem about "The Jumblies" was difficult to understand because I didn't know what a Jumblie was despite the illustration. There was nothing in my background knowledge to relate it to.

Even though some parts of the story was difficult to understand, the book was still fun and something that intermediate elementary students would enjoy. A teacher could use this with younger student, but may need to provide additional background knowledge to help with unknown words. That being said, if done as a read aloud, I think the students would have a lot of fun with it. The teacher should use the more common poems with younger students as a starting point.

[Barbara · Rating 3 out of 5]

Although many relish the nonsense verses of Edward Lear because of how imaginative and silly they are, they have never really been my cup of tea. The introduction lets readers know who this man was and celebrates his words, revived again in this partial collection, and seen from a fresh perspective through the acrylic illustrations of Calef Brown. My favorite poem is "Nonsense Alphabet" which goes through the alphabet and shouts out each letter at the end of each verse. Reading these poems and considering that the always creative Daniel Pinkwater was a fan as a child might provide some insight into his work as well.

[Jordan · Rating 3 out of 5]

This poetry book is for intermediate elementary grades. The begining of the book started by introducing Edward Lear. I liked how the writing in the book had different colors and fonts. I chose this book because kids would like that it is silly and nonsense poems. It reminds me of the books by Shel Silverstein. I would use this book to read poetry to the students when we have free time or when we are talking about poetry.

[Donalyn · Rating 3 out of 5]

Author Daniel Pinkwater and illustrator Calef Brown, team up to reintroduce young readers to the nonsense poetry of Edward Lear. Pinkwater's brief bio and introductory poem about Lear launch this collection and Brown's absurd drawings keep it going. I wonder how this book plays with its intended audience.

[Alyson (Kid Lit Frenzy) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pinkwater & Brown pair up to present Edward Lear's poetry in a new way. The illustrations are great and many of the poems are familiar to most adults. Great way to introduce kids to some of Lear's poetry.

[Jen · Rating 4 out of 5]

We took this out of the library but may have to purchase it for ourselves. We keep renewing it and have read it many times over! Calef Brown's illustrations make Lear's poetry even more brilliant and fun to read.

[♥ Park-Avenue Princess ♥ · Rating 5 out of 5]

Adorable book from Chronicle Books ... review to come! www.ParkAvePrincess.com.

[Cherie · Rating 1 out of 5]

Genre: Poetry
Copyright: 2011
Thoughts: I really did not like these poems. They're very long, and the words just didn't interest me, even though they were supposed to be silly.

[Rachel · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some wonderful classic poems, the illustrations are so odd they are intriguing.

[Mary Lee · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not my cup of tea.

[Robin · Rating 2 out of 5]

The rhymes are delightful, the art does not do them justice.

[Emily · Rating 3 out of 5]

Quirky poems and fantastical art.

[Renee Senters · Rating 1 out of 5]

I read this book to the smallest family member and while there were parts she found funny, overall I found this to be very tedious and not at all enjoyable.

[Martie · Rating 4 out of 5]

2016 reading challenge includes a poetry book, which I was dreading. But when author Edward Lear was listed as " father of nonsense poetry" I thought I would try. it was fun and silly

[Sam W · Rating 2 out of 5]

Interesting illustrations combined with nonsensical poems for children.

[Kelly · Rating 3 out of 5]

While I enjoyed this book of silly poetry, many of them were too long and rambling.

[Edward Sullivan · Rating 3 out of 5]

A colorful, whimsically illustrated collection of Lear's entertaining nonsense verse.