The Puffin Book of Nonsense Verse, chosen by Quentin Blake, is a big bouncy bag of silly poems for 5 year olds and whoever is reading aloud to them.<\/p>\n
It’s a collection of comic poems, old and new, sorted into sections with names like A Recipe for Indigestion and Chortling and Galumphing.<\/p>\n
The famous ones are all here. There’s Jabberwocky, The Owl and the Pussy-Cat and Spike Milligan’s On the Ning Nang Nong.<\/p>\n
But it’s the less famous ones that steal the show. Two dead men get up to fight. Somebody goes to the pictures tomorrow and takes a front seat at the back. Ebenezer Bleezer sells ice-cream in flavours like tuna taco and liver lava.<\/p>\n
Roger McGough recommends a certain dog-flavoured pudding with cream. Would you try it? (We wouldn’t.)<\/p>\n
It’s a proper read-aloud book. Some poems are only four lines long, perfect for one more at bedtime. Others, like The Walrus and the Carpenter, run on and on.<\/p>\n
Half the fun is the language. Loads of the words aren’t real words at all, so nobody knows quite how to say them, grown-ups included. One poem goes back hundreds of years and is still spelled the old way.<\/p>\n
Some of the jokes are dark in a cartoonish way. A head turns up in a bread box. A brother tries to stew his sister. One poem has a cook curry the page boy!<\/p>\n
Most children find that sort of thing very funny. If yours takes things very literally, you might skip a few and save them for later.<\/p>\n
It’s a lovely one to dip into rather than read straight through. You’ll probably find your own favourites to read again and again.<\/p>\n
If the gruesome ones get the biggest giggles, Revolting Rhymes is Roald Dahl doing much the same to fairy tales. (His greedy Centipede has a poem in this collection too.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Puffin Book of Nonsense Verse, chosen by Quentin Blake, is a big bouncy bag of silly poems for 5 year olds and whoever is reading aloud to them. It’s a collection of comic poems, old and new, sorted into sections with names like A Recipe for Indigestion and Chortling and Galumphing. The famous ones […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":13129,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"lr_next_read_post_id":8505,"lr_next_read_anchor":"Revolting Rhymes","lr_seo_hook":"A Jabberwock, poodle strudel and two dead men who get up for a fight."},"book_tag":[23],"age_group":[21],"book_type":[1044],"book_author":[807],"class_list":["post-9342","our-books","type-our-books","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","book_tag-funny-books","age_group-books-for-5-year-olds","book_type-paid","book_author-quentin-blake"],"yoast_title":"The Puffin Book of Nonsense Verse by Quentin Blake | Little Reads","yoast_metadesc":"A Jabberwock, poodle strudel and two dead men who get up for a fight. For ages 5+. 3,000+ books in the Little Reads app. 7-day free trial.","acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n