Hypnotize a Tiger: Poems About Just About Everything

by Calef Brown, Calef Brown (Illustrator)

Overview

This is the first longer-format, middle-grade collection from #1 New York Times-bestselling author-illustrator Calef Brown. Moving away from the picture book format offers Calef the opportunity to tackle a variety of themes and poetry styles as well as reach a slightly older audience. Hypnotize a Tiger is chock-full of Calef's zany black-and-white artwork and features his wonderfully inventive characters and worlds-from the "completely nonviolent and silent" Lou Gnome to Percival, the impetuous (and none-too-sensible) lad who believes he is invincible, to Hugh Jarm (who has a huge arm, natch!). It's a whimsical world: creative, fun, and inspiring!

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781627795777
Publisher:	Henry Holt and Co. (BYR)
Publication date:	04/28/2015
Sold by:	Macmillan
Format:	eBook
Pages:	144
File size:	215 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.
Age Range:	8 - 12 Years

About the Author

Calef Brown is an illustrator, character designer, and children's book creator. Books he has written and illustrated includePolkabats and Octopus Slacks, Hallowilloween, and Flamingos on the Roof, which was a #1 New York Times bestseller. He has also illustrated Adventures of a Cat-Whiskered Girl, The Yggyssey, and The Neddiad by Daniel Pinkwater and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button by F. Scott Fitzgerald. He lives with his family in Vancouver, British Columbia.
Calef Brown is an illustrator, character designer, and children's book creator. Books he has written and illustrated include Polkabats and Octopus Slacks, Hallowilloween, and Flamingos on the Roof, which was a #1 New York Times bestseller. He has also illustrated Adventures of a Cat-Whiskered Girl, The Yggyssey, and The Neddiad by Daniel Pinkwater and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button by F. Scott Fitzgerald. He lives with his family in Vancouver, British Columbia.

Editorial Reviews

02/09/2015
Brown writes and illustrates playfully matter-of-fact poems that feature peculiar animals, creatures, and humans, drawn with chalky outlines and expressive eyes. Categories of poems include “The Critterverse,” “Schoolishness,” and “Word Crashes,” a section featuring nouveau portmanteau words (“This Grouchyoungorilla/ hasn’t gotten very far./ Some thoughtless thug/ has just unplugged/ his nicelectricar”). Beneath the framed central images, Brown doesn’t let the bottom edge of the pages go to waste, filling them with mini-scenes and jokes connected to the poems above. Full of absurdity and off-kilter musings (“I think I need a forklift/ to lift my backpack./ So many textbooks/ in my knapsack,/ I fear a back-snap”), Brown’s collection offers a zingy introduction to the silly side of poetry. Ages 8–12. Agent: Jennifer Laughran, Andrea Brown Literary Agency. (Mar.)

Publishers Weekly

Winner of the Lee Bennett Hopkins Poetry Honor Award
Winner of the Lion & Unicorn Award for Excellence in North American Poetry
An NEA Educator Recommended Book

“Full of absurdity and off-kilter musings, Brown's collection offers a zingy introduction to the silly side of poetry.” —Publishers Weekly

“Backyard Byzantines, Hipster Hirsutes, Arcane Arcadians, Rare Rondos ... Calef Brown's poems read like a guest list of Who's Who in Kalamazoo. I loved it. He writes poems we want to turn into desserts.” —Jack Gantos, Newbery Award–winning author

“The best books can take you to places you never knew existed. Hypnotize a Tiger will blast you there on a Skyscraper Rocket with imaginary companions, herds of wordplay, and a giant smile. Calef Brown is the surreal deal.” —Kenn Nesbit, U.S. Children's Poet Laureate

“Brown is a superb craftsman, with jazzy rhythms that get your whole body moving and a gift for embedded rhymes” —Sarah Ellis, The Horn Book

“Brown makes great use of wordplay, and the staccato syllables make the poems fun to read aloud. Little ones who enjoy funny verse will be tickled by this title.” —Booklist

“There were certain books that fascinated and excited me as a child. I read them over and over, and they changed my perceptions forever. This is a book like that. It makes a delightful playground of language and concept. Calef Brown is a hero. He is a bulwark against mediocrity. He is my hero too.” —Daniel Pinkwater, author, artist, and radio commentator

“With witty poems combined with his amazing paintings, Calef Brown has made his distinct mark in the history of American culture as a true literary treasure.” —Dan Santat, award-winning author and illustrator

“In your hands you hold a very special book. Get ready to meet a spectacular and hilarious cast of delightfully goofy and whimsical characters that live in each of these delicious poems. Calef Brown has made me feel like a mustached baby tasting sugar for the first time!” —Jorge R. Gutierrez, director of "The Book of Life" and creator (with wife Sandra Equihua) of "El Tigre, The Adventures of Manny Rivera"

From the Publisher

01/01/2015
Gr 2–5—This collection delivers a smorgasbord of Brown's trademark nonsensical poems. Broken into sections by theme such as "The Critterverse," "Schoolishness," and "Word Crashes," the selections depict an offbeat world where dinosaurs barbecue "titanic taters" and ghoulish gym teachers make kids play "dodgebull… with actual cattle." The poems bounce and jump from one topic to the next with sometimes satirical, always silly, word play running along the page bottoms. Brown's stylized, folk artsy illustrations evoke just the right mood for the zany verse. Though there is more than one line that does not roll easily off the tongue and awkward rhymes abound, it is easy to see this clumsiness as part of the spirit of the collection. From the poems themselves to the illustrations to the tongue-in-cheek interview with Brown at the book's close, it's clear that this is a collection that doesn't take itself too seriously. For libraries seeking something silly, especially where Brown's poems are already a hit.—Jill Heritage Maza, Montclair Kimberley Academy, Montclair, NJ

School Library Journal

2014-12-22
More nonsense verse from inveterate punster/illustrator Brown.Fun knows no bounds in this collection of over 80 zany poems and accompanying mixed-media illustrations, topped off by the author's Q-and-A written almost entirely in verse. Younger children will enjoy poring over Brown's detailed, silly drawings of animals, insects and imagined objects and hearing the tight, surprising end rhymes that bind many of the poems (a delightful pairing of "speedometer" with "vomiter" in the poem "Carsick" comes to mind). Middle-grade readers will likely revel in the sophisticated wordplay Brown employs to depict the humorous perspectives offered throughout, particularly those of less-savory creatures. A vulture laments, "This is my diet? / If it died, I try it?" Soon-to-be butterflies complain, "Just because we're pupae, / people give us the poop-eye." And then there's the ho-hum fate of lice: "I would hate to be a louse— / always feeling lousy, / even when overjoyed / or pleasantly drowsy." Successful, too, are moments where poem and illustration work hand in hand to pun, as in the poem "Hugh"—"Meet my Belgian friend. / He lives near Bruges, on a farm. / His name is Hugh Jarm"—illustrated with farmer Hugh waving one giant arm in greeting. With verse and illustrations running the gamut from creative to kooky and occasionally gross, kids should devour this entertaining collection in one sitting. (Poetry. 6-12)

Kirkus Reviews