The Nonsense Show
Eric Carle
Puffin Books
Eric Carle’s latest, brilliantly playful book pays homage to surrealism and in particular, René Magritte.   Herein he creates a topsy- turvy world: ‘Welcome friends!/ Don’t be slow./ Step right up to/ The Nonsense Show!’ urges the rabbit magician on the first spread and thus we’re entranced by the sight of that rabbit clutching a boy he’s presumably pulled out of the hat.
From then on we encounter a series of supremely silly scenarios: crazy rhyming text and preposterous pictures such as …

Transport – of sorts – features in:

And …

Did I spot a counting opportunity there?
It’s impossible to choose a favourite spread: every one delivers delight and a surprise but among my favourites are the mouse chasing a feathery-looking cat and that bathtub rubber duck trotting through the water on its be-trousered human legs …

Right from his wonderful cover, Eric Carle guarantees to provoke giggles, nay laughter and the grand finale proffers a plethora of possible descriptions of this whole absurd, other world.

 

It’s a world that some adults may baulk at but children, not so far from the world of nursery rhymes with its moon jumping cows and dishes running away with spoons, and gardens growing silver bells and cockle shells, will be more than ready to embrace Carle’s weird ideas; and imaginations sparked, try creating some of their own weird and wacky scenes with pictures and words.
Make sure that you don’t overlook Carle’s bonkers biography complete with photo, inside the back dust jacket: how eminently inventive that guy is.

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