This is a first for this blog in more ways than one! The first picture book and the first book of poetry. I expect I'll be reviewing more picture books as I begin to gather them to read to the baby, so this definitely won't be the last one. And I have lots of poetry on my to-read list, I just never get around to reading it - so this probably will not be the last review of poetry either.Christopher Myers' version of the Jabberwocky poem by Lewis Carroll keeps the text the same - it is the illustrations that reimagine what the poem is about. In this tale, the Jabberwocky is a giant, fourteen-fingered, basketball-playing "beast". Our hero is a boy, who decides to play this giant in a game of one-on-one. He wins triumphantly, and the neighborhood celebrates with him.
Jabberwocky is a difficult poem to read, without any sort of context to imagine, because it is full of gibberish words. Myers' version makes it comprehensible to kids who might otherwise get lost in the language. They can envision what the words mean for themselves, and maybe imagine other battles in their lives that this triumphant poem can apply to. This is a fantastic retelling of this classic poem.
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