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The King Who Rained

Book Summary

Reviewed by Peter Lewis

Fred Gwynne's visual puns on some of our language's homonyms and idioms are playful, but they do feel a bit tired: How many times are we going to be able to jump-start a laugh at a fork in the road being pictured as just that? Gwynne's artwork has a slapdash cuteness.

Each two-page spread pokes gentle fun at an idiom, homonym, or word use that runs counter to its literal meaning. Thus we have a reference to a king who rained, a (table) fork in the road, and references to holding up a bridal (locomotive) train, plus a literal frog in the throat, as well as bear feet and foot prince, all turned on their merry heads by Gwynne's direct, comical artwork.

Is It Any Good?

3

Fred Gwynne hits on some new material here with tricks of pronunciation -- "foot prince in the snow" -- but otherwise he travels over the old terrain of idioms and homonyms that was better mined by Remy Charlip in Arm and Arm: A Collection of Connections, Endless Tales, Reiterations, and Other Echoalia. While repetition can give a book a warm sense of familiarity or a pleasing lilt, or can invite reader participation, here Gwynne's failure to alter his delivery makes the book feel like an endless knock-knock joke: It stifles the text, denies it oxygen.

The artwork, which looks like it was capably knocked off with a set of Magic Markers and some fast handwork, has an easy comfort to it. The illustrations have a 5-year-old's vividness to them.

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