Charley Poon’s Pomes by Robin Hawdon
Unable to find good funny poems to read aloud to his grandchildren – other than the ninety year old A.A. Milne classics – Robin Hawdon decided to write some himself.
The result is ‘Charley Poon’s Pomes’ (sic) a newly published collection of thirty “hilarious and touching” poems, beautifully illustrated by Wendy Hoile, which have received rave reviews from blog sites such as Linda Hill, Emily Williams and Book Room.
The poems recount the exploits of young Charley Poon – every parent’s nightmare – and his eccentric menagerie of nursery animals.
They cover everything from youthful games and exploits, to the problems of growing up, to the ups and downs of school and family life, and the joys of seaside holidays.
For all parents and grandparents who want something new and entertaining with which to occupy those tricky lights-out bedtime moments.
Reviews
I always complain when children’s books don’t model conventional spellings as in Pome in the title to Charley Poon’s Pomes (and some of the words used in the poems) because I always want books to show children the correct spellings as their language is developing. However, I can almost forgive this in Charley Poon’s Pomes as I think they exemplify his character really well!
I thought the way in which the book is presented was lovely. The writing is akin to that of a child in its different colours but still perfectly legible and there were some interesting invented words to get children thinking about language. The rhymes are great and the poem Squawkers Pome is brilliant for reading aloud, exploring assonance and alliteration and generally having fun with a real tongue twister. The section Spelling could lead to hours of language exploration as the author takes the reader from ‘know’ to ‘slough’ with all the homophones in between.
Robin Hawdon has a wonderful understanding of how children think and I loved the poems about friendship and childhood activities like riding a bike and playing in the snow. In fact, although these are children’s posm, they ignite memories for adults too. I’m quite sure teachers would agree with the sentiments in School! My favourite was Grownups – I think all adults with children should read it as a salutary lesson.
A lovely book for adults and children to share – Linda’s Book Bag (Top Amazon Reviewer)
This was a fun colorful book to read. The author did a good job with getting the writing style correct. By this I mean you felt like you were reading poems written by a little boy. They were fun and silly. I also like the font they used because it looked like a little boy’s crayon handwriting. The drawings that went along with the poems were cute as well. One of my favorite poems was Joe the Jrafe – yes that is spelled correctly remember a little boy was writing these. Joe was a giraffe with a loud laugh that was so loud he scared people and he laughed at everything. So Charley’s mom taught Joe how to laugh more quietly so he would not scare people. His spelling poem was cute as well. In it he wants to know why things sound the same but are spelled different. I loved all the little misspellings in the book it just made it more like you were reading a book your young boy wrote. I can’t wait to pass this on to my nephew. I think he will find it funny. – Bookaunt
– Danny
