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{{infoboxinfobox1
|title=I'm Just No Good At Rhyming: And Other Nonsense for Mischievous Kids and Immature Grown-Ups
|author=Chris Harris and Lane Smith
|date=October 2017
|isbn=9781509881048
|websitecover=Harris_Rhyming|videoaznuk=1509881042|amazonukaznus=<amazonuk>1509881042</amazonuk>
}}
In the sniffy world of literary poetry, people seem to be able to knock together a dozen verses and get an audience of twenty people to buy a pamphlet, and they call themselves published authors. You get a similar thing at times with poetry for the young – most poetry books, after all, have a lot more blank space in them than routine volumes, and people compile their best arrays of very few words in between two covers and bingo, they have a book, and twenty minutes later bingo, you've read it. That's most certainly not the case here, for this is crammed with what has to be considered a major outpouring of wit and rhyme. And whatever age you are, and whatever experience with verse you may have, this will not seem to you like someone's first book of poetry.
There is an immense amount of invention here, and a superlative spread of surprises. You get works that play with the layout and design our artist and his wife have provided, to the extent that we're seeing concrete poetry for the young. You have a gallimaufry of subjects, too, all treated in a fashion that makes them ideal for the young reader, whether it be a single couplet here or there, a full three-page drama in verse (or even done up as stage dialogue), or whether it be a series of narrative limericks about an abbreviated snake.
Something else that adds to the nonsensical humour here is the recurring joke – the opening work, with its clever and inventive welcome to the book , gets revisited several times, and you often have call-backs such as you'd expect this comedy producer to use at his day job in TV. (There's even a running gag about the page numbering being, er, a little off.) These force you to read the book from page one to page whatever – something you may have been taught is not necessary with other works in verse.
With this being such a larger-than-expected debut (heck, what with its size to cope with all the inventiveness in design it's a large book all told) the standard does drop a little towards the end, but bang for buck this is definitely the best poetry book of the year. You get the suitably absurd (but clever absurd, as opposed to asinine absurd) that will appeal to the target audience, whether it be the invention of a new swear word, a talking sandwich, or a grouch about a frog race. You get a hugely inventive way with tweaking and having fun with our language. And you also, what's more, get a really heart-warming melancholia at times, that can make you go ''aaw'' just as vocally as you'd previously been laughing.
I must thank the publishers for my review copy.
The same publishers also have [[Fish Dream of Trees by Axel Scheffler, Frantz Wittkamp and Roger McGough]], which is verse in a fun, bonkers style for the younger child. We've also enjoyed [[A Perfect Day by Lane Smith]] and [[The Squickerwonkers by Evangeline Lilly and Johnny Fraser-Allen]].
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[[Category:Chris Harris]][[Category:Lane Smith]]
