The Land of Utter Nonsense ¦ The Boy Who Forgot to Grow Down and other limericks

The first is a rather random collection of nonsense. There are one or two gems (such as Carolyn Wells Household Pets), a good representation of the much-anthologised (milligan, Nash, Rosen) and, well, quite a lot of weakish material. I'll look harder to introduce young juniors to the flavour of nonsense. West's lively, Quentin Blake-like illustrations are not well served in the cramped format of the book.

The second is more promising. Proceeds from this collection of limericks by 'celebrities from the sporting, political and entertainments world' will raise funds for a charity called Help A Child to See. Some of the contributors have misunderstood metre, but it's a generally vigorous collection. The third and fourth year juniors I shared it with learned well from the witty and neatly-constructed (like Judi Dench's and Michael Palin's) and wrote their own. There's a potentially libellous one about Mary Whitehouse, two smashing send-ups of the 'get a celebrity to write something' school of book making from Clement Freud and Victoria Wood. My favourites were the Archbishop of Canterbury's and, on Page 37. Bruce Kent's.