For Laughing Out Loud: Poems to Tickle Your Funnybone

*  Jack Prelutsky was born in Brooklyn, New York.  He attended New York City Public Schools and studied voice at the High School of Music and Art.  He enrolled in Hunter College in Manhattan but left soon after "to become a beatnik".
*  Jack has been a cab driver, a busboy, a photographer, a furniture mover, a potter, and a folk singer.

* He enjoys bicycling, playing racquetball, woodworking and cooking.  He lives in Washington State with his wife Carolynn and a vast collection of poetry books and frogs in every shape, size, and form -- except living!
* There was a time when Jack couldn't stand poetry.  In grade school he had a teacher who left him with the impression that poetry was the literary equivalent of liver.  He rediscovered poetry in his twenties, and he decided that he would write about things that kids really cared about, and that he would strive to make poetry delightful.
* He has been writing poetry for more than twenty years and has published more than three dozen books for children.  

Prelutsky introduces this volume of humorous poems with a verse of his own: "If you have got a funnybone, / and I've no doubt you do, / then this completely silly book / is sure to tickle you." The poems are silly, full of high jinksstet spelling per Web. and clever nonsense. Although the author and title indexes at the end of the book are useful, a table of contents would have clarified the book's loose organization. A verse about Bella's new umbrella is followed by one about ghouls' ghoul-oshes. Poems about nuts, noodles and bananas fill one double-page spread while verses about rattlesnake meat, jellyfish stew and eating eels occupy another. Priceman's ( Friend or Frog ; Rachel Fister's Blister ) slapdash watercolor illustrations are full of energy and high spirits, perfectly suited to this eclectic collection that includes work by such favorites as Nash, Lobel, Kennedy, Kuskin, Yolen and Raskin. Ages 7-12.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.