Poetry Friday: Anything But Hank
Friday, June 25th, 2010
Anything But Hank by Rachel Lebowitz and Zachariah Wells, illustrated by Eric Orchard (Biblioasis 2008) is the story of a child in search of a name. Told in quatrains of rhyming verse with an abab rhyme scheme, the story unfolds over five ‘books’ as it were, titled Book the First, Book the Second, etc. A mother and father of an infant cannot agree on a name which makes the baby cranky and unruly (you would be, too, if you were “known by ‘it’ and ‘thing’ ) until at last a pig appears with a possible solution. He will take the child to a naming wizard’s lizard.
The rhymes in this book are entirely playful – is it any surprise, for example, that the wizard has a lizard? Or that the full moon over the hedge is named Reg? The illustrations by Eric Orchard are rich and lush with particularly expressive renditions of the pig and the little red-outfitted nameless infant. The title, Anything But Hank, of course, refers to the name of Hank which the child is NOT to be named, but finding out what the child’s name will be is what keeps you reading. I won’t tell you what that name is, but will give you a hint: it rhymes with ‘fridge.’
This week’s Poetry Friday host is Amy at the Art of Irreverence.
