Review of the Day: Beware the Dragon and the Nozzlewock by Vikram Madan

Beware the Dragon and the Nozzlewock
By Vikram Madan
Wordsong (an imprint of Astra Books for Young Readers)
$19.99
ISBN: 9781635928174
On shelves November 12th

Does poetry for kids sell? It’s an interesting question. Let’s scale it back a bit then and ask a simpler one: Does poetry for kids sell in any month other than April a.k.a. Poetry Month? Or even simpler, does anyone but teachers buy works of children’s poetry? Does anyone but teachers seek out new poets rather than just grabbing some collection by Shel Silverstein? I don’t know the answer to these questions, but I do know that when the publisher of Beware the Dragon and the Nozzlewock decided on how to sell this book, they hit on a brilliant description. The subtitle of this book reads, “A graphic novel poetry collection full of surprising characters”. And just the other day in my own library, somebody asked if this book should be shelved in the graphic novel section or the poetry section. Do you see what author/illustrator Vikram Madan has done here? He’s managed to straddle the line between poetry and comics! Poetry and comics, for the record, make for a perfect match with one another, and any author/artist who realizes that will be on the path to victory. So I guess my answer to that first question I asked is yes, poetry sells. But you have to sell IT in turn, baby. Yeah, you do. This book? Sells it and then some.

Twenty-five poems encapsulate this collection. On the cover you’ll see that the book promises to be “Full of surprising characters” and that is, if anything, underselling it. Ghosts, mummies, dinosaurs, green-haired janitors, smooth talking moose salesmen, you name it, they’re here. Along the way you’ll encounter the dreaded nozzlewock as well. Think of it like the Jabberwocky but 500% more nozzlely. If there is anything you can say of the book, it’s consistently interesting, ridiculously funny, and inherently silly.

There’s just a lot of terribly bland poetry out there for kids. Sorry, but it’s true. And I feel bad saying that since there really isn’t much poetry published in a given year for kids to begin with. To my mind, children’s poetry breaks down into two distinct categories, each with their own separate jobs. First, you have the meaningful poetry. This is meant to get kids thinking, perhaps even writing their own poetry, and it lays the groundwork for future poets as well. It is, however, prone to pablum. Then you’ve the funny poetry. This also lures children in, though oftentimes it’s seen as a gateway drug to that aforementioned meaningful poetry. I don’t know how much respect funny poetry gets in its own right, perhaps because funny poetry for adults tends to be associated more with Ogden Nash and Dorothy Parker rather than anyone contemporary. Even so, it’s an artform in and of itself and Vikram Madan one of its finest practitioners. And this is a relief since it would be hard to say which is more painful: dull meaningful poetry or unfunny funny poetry.

The book opens with the epic poem “Ballad of the Ghost Guppies”. There are are a lot of things to like right off the bat here. First off, the premise is bonkers. A young blue-haired woman is in her home when some ghosts come knocking on the door bearing bags of gold and begging to be let in. Greedy for the gold, she allows them to pass, whereupon they reveal their true intentions to snare her soul. That’s when she reveals herself to be a witch, turning each ghost into a ghost guppy instead. She then immediately sells them at a fair and plans to duplicate the plan and sell them as puppies next. And all the while the rhymes are just fantastic. I mean, just listen to this:

“The spooks sailed in, some half, some whole,
And soon had me surrounded!
Their evil plan? To snare my soul!
Their hoard? A sham – just painted coal!
Their treachery? Unbounded!”

That’s just delightful. The cadences. The rhymes. The fact that Madan scans with aplomb. And throughout the book this pattern continues. Comics with panels make way for some fabulous verses, but Madan also works in enough of his own weird takes to make everything consistently funny.

When I said earlier that Madan had managed to straddle the line between poetry and comics, I probably should have made it clear that he’s not the only one doing so. Earlier this year we saw an even more blatant combo with Poetry Comics by Grant Snider. Comics, it seems, are beginning to realize that they can reinvigorate old literary tropes and techniques that have been withering away as of late. Poetry and folk/fairytales do mighty well when combined with this kind of sequential storytelling. If kids can’t get enough comics (and they definitely can’t) then this is truly the way to infect their brains with some high quality nuttiness/verse.

Madan notes on his author blurb that he grew up in India, and part of what I love so much about his book is the Southeast Asian representation on the pages. For example, there’s an entire sequence set in Goa that may have kids scrambling to maps to find out where precisely it lies. Of course, the whole thing is chock full of people of all kinds of races, ages, and abilities. Add in stuff like dance sequences, concrete poems, and even a section with panels that reminded me of some of Jason Shiga’s work, and you have yourself one of the finest, funniest poetry books you’ll have encountered in a long time. For those of you lucky enough to have already read A Hatful of Dragons, this is just as good, if not better. I’m not saying that Madan’s unique form of humor, comics, and verse will save poetry as we know it, but I’m not NOT saying it either. Just hand it to a kid when they ask for something funny. You’ll be doing them a favor (and isn’t it nice to hand out a work of poetry during a month other than just April?). Clever stuff.

On shelves November 12th.

Source: Galley sent from publisher for review.

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