Even More Nonsense

Twenty chunks of word play from Rosen's prolific pen are accompanied in this large picture book by suitably manic illustrations and marginalia contributed by Clare Mackie, mainly featuring small animals cracking puns and enacting other linguistic jokes. As in his earlier collections, Rosen shares and celebrates children's preoccupations with the flexibility of language, taking everyday words, snippets of conversation, silly names, insults and quarrels as themes, and subjecting them to comical repetition and modulation. I don't think that there is anything here that will take its place alongside the Jumblies or the Nin Nan Nong, but this is an enjoyable book which might stimulate children's own inclinations to mess about with language.