A Pond Full of Ink | 
pickThe poems remind me of Shel Silverstein and the illustrations of 70‘s cartoons a la Schoolhouse Rock. #poetry
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pickThe poems remind me of Shel Silverstein and the illustrations of 70‘s cartoons a la Schoolhouse Rock. #poetry
pickEverything about this #picturebook #poetry collection is a delight for the ears, eyes & mind. Striking, award-winning mixed media art by Sieb Posthuma. The rhyming poetry is droll, shrewd & quick witted & celebrates lovable, rebellious & eccentric characters. Remarkably engaging #translation by multiple award-winning David Colmer. #kidlit fun for all ages.
“Are you joking, Mrs Keller?
Keeping bears down in your cellar?
Keeping bears here on a residential street?
If they were rabbits I‘d ignore them
and pretend I never saw them
but these are bears with teeth and claws
and hairy feet!”
(My friend in Auckland introduced me to this collection by reading me this poem during a recent FaceTime conversation. The social commentary, the silliness, the anapestic meter… I love it all.)
The Furniture
“Would you like to come out walking?” said the table to the chair,
“I‘ve been standing here forever, and I‘d like to take the air.”
In an interview, translator David Colmer said he hadn‘t been impressed by an earlier English translation of Annie M.G. Schmidt‘s children‘s poetry. I‘m not sure if the cover pictured above is the book he was referring to, but it does have at least one poem in common with A Pond Full of Ink: Isabella Caramella. I would love to look at both to compare Henrietta ten Harmsel‘s #translation with Colmer‘s version.
The Singing Tea Kettle
Their father‘s gone out and their mother‘s gone out,
the children are out and nobody‘s about,
the kettle‘s been left on the stove.
Hear it go, hear it go, hear it go: TOOOOT.
The pan full of cabbage says, “Bah, shame on you!
Why must you kick up such a hullabaloo?
I usually couldn‘t care less,
But you sound like the Orient Express!”
(And it goes on. I adore the playfulness in these poems.)
At the foot of the garden there‘s a pond full of ink.
The blackbirds all gather around it to drink.
And whenever that writer is at a loose end,
he goes down to that pond to refill his pen.
#picturebook #poetry #translation
