Runny Babbit – a collection of poems by Shel Silverstein

Silverstein is well known for his collections Where the Sidewalk Ends and The Light in the Attic. Runny Babbit was completed just before his death in 1999 and is a collection of letter reversal wordplay poems, or as Silverstein says: ‘Runny Babbit talk’. We step into Runny Babbit’s world of friends, adventures and daily routines where the letters are reversed but everything makes amusing sense – very much in the tradition of Lewis Carroll’s Jabberwocky and Edward Lear’s nonsense verse.

We visit the library with Runny Babbit where ‘there were bundreds of hooks – Bistory hooks, beography gooks, and lots of bory stooks’. Then there is Runny’s Jig Bump: ‘Runny be quimble, Runny be nick, Runny cump over the jandlestick. But now – what smells like furning bluff? Guess he didn’t hump jigh enough.’ At first glance one might imagine the repeated wordplay joke would become tedious but Silverstein’s intelligence, imagination and sense of humour accompanied by his delightful line drawings ensure that this collection will become a classic.