Rex, Adam. 2008. Frankenstein Takes the Cake Which Is Full of Of Funny Stuff Like Rotting Heads and Giant Gorillas and Zombies Dressed As Little Girls and Edgar Allan Poe. The Book We Mean--Not The Cake.
This book, Frankenstein Takes the Cake, is the follow up to Adam Rex's Frankenstein Makes a Sandwich. (A book which sadly I haven't read yet though I have heard wonderful stuff about it.) The book is a collection of semi-related poems--funny poems about the lighter side of the dark and spooky. The illustrations are perfectly paired with the text.
Here's one of my favorites:
New Glasses
In her classes, without glasses,
she could barely see the board.
With her specs she checks the teachers,
sees their frightened, frozen features--
Oh so that's why,
when she raised her hand,
Medusa was ignored.
My other favorite from the book was "E.T. Mail."
E.T.-Mail
We assumed it was the case
that in a place as big as space
we'd find some trace of other races
with our scientific bases.
When a signal was detected,
it was not what we expected.
In the subject line it pleaded,
Please reply--
Assistance needed
SALUTATIONS TO YOUR HEALTH.
PLEASE HELP ME TRANSFER ALL MY WEALTH
INTO YOUR BANK ACCOUNT ON EARTH--
ELEVEN MILLION DOLLARS WORTH.
I NEED YOUR ANSWER RIGHT AWAY.
PLEASE SEND A LETTER BACK TODAY
(ALONG WITH FIFTY DOLLARS, PLEASE,
TO PAY THE MONEY-TRANSFER FEES).
We gasped--a message from the stars!
And then another came from Mars:
NEED BIGGER, YELLOWER ANTENNAE?
HAVE TOO FEW OR HAVE TOO MANY?
LOSS OF VIGOR? LOUSY SLEEPER?
OUR PRESCRIPTION DRUGS ARE CHEAPER!!!
We were noticing a pattern,
when a bunch arrived from Saturn:
FANCY WATCHES! CLICK AND SEE!
and GET YOUR HYPERSCHOOL DEGREE.
At SINGLES IN YOUR SECTOR!!!
we disabled our detector.
Then we emptied out the cache
and dragged the letters to the trash.
So that's the fact we had to face:
There's no intelligence in space.
But that's okay--for what it's worth,
there isn't much of it on Earth.
Anyway, this was a fun book. A really fun book. I can't really compare it to the first book (better, worse, bout the same) but I can say that I enjoyed it all on its own.
Roundup is at Read. Imagine. Talk.
© Becky Laney of Becky's Book Reviews
4 comments:
Ha! Those are great! I'm so glad you included examples. Adam Rex is an absolutely fantastic illustrator. I love his work. I did a Friday Favorite post on him awhile back:
http://www.stainlesssteeldroppings.com/?p=455
He is certainly talented. I'm going to have to try to shag this one for the R.I.P. Challenge, it just looks like too much fun not to.
Oh, oh, oh, I love Adam Rex. He was a key-note speaker at SCBWI LA this year and he is the cutest and the funniest fellow I ever did hear. "Adorable" was the word our MC kept using for all the speakers, and that word, really did fit Adam Rex.
I bought Frankenstein Makes a Sandwich. Sorry you haven't gotten to read it.
He's a brilliant man. Adam, I mean, not Frankenstein.
We just picked this one up from the library and I can't tell you how much we laughed. My favorite was a very small add -- for the vegetarian werelibrarian we present the "tofillager". It killed me. Literally. I must get this one (as well as his other one.)
Adam is hilarious. It is good to see that poetry can also be used in a lighter mood and is not always a deep emotional piece.
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