The Horn Book Guide

LITERATURE

Willard, Nancy

The Moon and Riddles Diner and the Sunnyside CafÃ©

40 pp. | Harcourt | April, 2001 | Trade ISBN 0-15-201941-3 $$17.00

(2) K-3 Illustrated by Chris Butler. Willard's thirteen diner-inspired poems are airy, pitch-perfect absurdities with dancing rhythms that recall, among other familiar favorites, Mother Goose, limericks, and the blues. In the best nonsense tradition, events are only tenuously governed by logic. The cut-paper illustrations are a beguiling meld of the concrete and the ethereal. Like the poetry, the art is in just the right style to set literal-minded imaginations free.

Reviewer: Joanna Rudge Long | Horn Book Magazine Issue: July, 2001