(Book Cover Compliments of Barnes and Noble)
Bibliography
Grandits, John. Technically, it’s not my fault : concrete poems. New York: Clarion Books. 2004. ISBN 9780618428335Review
In a creatively irreverent and decidedly laugh-out-loud style, Grandit explores the daily musings of an 11-year old boy named Robert. Grandit’s concrete poems are masterpieces built from over 30 different fonts arranged in whimsical as well as technical shapes. Readers will enjoy rotating and revolving the book to follow the text. Poems on Robert’s ordinary issues cover homework, his crazy sister, skateboarding, and mowing the grass. Readers will delight in Robert wrapping his sister’s algebra homework around a firework tube and seeing it arc then shower down in random numbers on the page. Robert’s eccentric side is also seen in poems touching on the history of farts, the school bus that eats children, and inventing a spew-inducing roller-coaster. The “Spew Machine” carries readers across the page through red flames, waves of water and poisonous black spiders only to be shot from a cannon at the end, but saved by a parachute. The red, black, and white colors are masterfully used to help create Grandit’s crisp, playful images. Children in grades 4-8, especially boys, will be sucked in to Robert’s engrossing world.
