Joy Cowley knows what makes children laugh.

In this book full of absurd poems and very short, silly stories, a man takes his tadpoles for a walk in his hat, a cat is surprised by its talking feet, a tiger gobbles up a dentist, ten baggy clowns do a do-wacky dance . . . along with many more preposterous flights of imagination. Illustrations by David Barrow—a first-rate visual comedian—expand the humor in each fantastical suggestion. Cowley channels the spirit of classic, silly humorists such as Spike Milligan, Edward Lear, and Ogden Nash in this exuberant collection for the family that emboldens readers to experiment and play with language.

Prizes

PANZ Book Design Awards Winner,National Library of New Zealand's Best Children's and YA Books,New Zealand Listener's Top 50 Kids Books

"With clear rhymes that will be fun to read aloud, Cowley has crafted a collection that has merit both at home and in the classroom, with rhymes playing with early language and sentence structures and encouraging the most absurd of imaginations."—Books+Publishing

Joy Cowley is a celebrated New Zealand writer for children and adults, who has won many awards and honors. These include a New Zealand Arts Foundation Icon Award for lifetime achievement, the Prime Minister's Award for contribution to literature, and shortlisting for the Hans Christian Andersen Award. David Barrow is a graduate of the Cambridge School of Art where he completed a Masters in Children's Book Illustration and received the top prize, the Sebastian Walker award for most promising children's illustrator. He lives in England with his wife and son.