GREEN, Paula (text) Myles Lawford (illus.) The Letterbox Cat and Other Poems Scholastic (NZ), 2014 96pp NZ$12.00 pbk ISBN 9781775432234 SCIS 1665791
A range of poetic forms (acrostic, narrative poems, nonsense and comic verse, and shape poems) are all used here to excite the young reader/speaker about life and all its funny aspects (especially cats)! For example, ‘Nice Ice’ (p. 47) is a delightful take on ice-cream where the use of typescript/word and letter shapes) tell the ‘story’. We can all share our favourite ice-cream flavour here! Whilst slurping on the ice-cream, read ‘Sand’ (pp 38-39) and recall the joy of digging a hole and burying your Dad, hunting for Toheroa shell fishes’ signal imprint in the sand and the receding tide and screaming with agony as the heat of Taranaki iron sands burn your toes! That is the joy of a poetry text : letting it spark your light too!
reviewed by John McKenzie