This is a collection of poems rooted in a mindscape that mirrors children’s thoughts as they mull over weighty questions such as, What If? and Whyever Not?

Ranging from the silly and the absurd with poems such as Stubby Joe that bring us a tit-for-tat dialogue between Stinkus Finkus and his big toe, to thematically connected poems that imagine gristly ends for irksome children, this is a book that’s bound to get readers giggling, chuckling, wondering, and despairing at the fate of a few of the characters on the pages.

The This is What Happens To series of poems hands out unanticipated consequences for Children Who Dig Their Noses in Public; Children Who Scratch (Ick) in Public; Kids Who Won’t Sit Down When the Parade Begins and Thus Block the View of Someone in Front of Them; Children Who Say They Are Going to Fail Their Exams but then Stand First; Children Who Scream in Public; Children Who Boast Incessantly.

There are shape poems that play with type and the composition of words on a page (Bats; Question), as well as poems that add layers to historical events such as True Story inspired by—as the author’s note mentions—Sir Hans Sloane’s collections that reputedly formed the basis of the British Museum. There is also an imagined response (In Defense of Rudy) to a “rather rude limerick” by J Lockwood Kipling, father of Sir Rudyard Kipling, about the time his son was frightened by a Bombay Hen.

Poems in the book play on the way words look and sound, alongside compositions that paint a portrait of a mind adrift while the hands busy themselves (Hungry in Mathematics Class; A Mathematical Love Story; We Need New Days of the Week). In a book for and about children, their grown-ups can’t be far away. Enter the mothers with their unwavering love for coconut oil, applied to their child’s head for lustrous hair (Hair-oil Horror), offset more seriously by a child who struggles to find words that rhyme when the child’s father is taken away by “them.” (They Took Papa Away In A Car).

The book includes odes to the act of reading (I’d Rather Read; Reading), and ends on a note of hope, with poems that urge readers to let go of their inhibitions and dance, (When the Music Starts, and When the Music Stops), followed by a firm declaration calling on children to be happy irrespective of who they become when they grow up (What do you want to be when you grow up?)

Tickle Me, Don’t Tickle Me
And Other Poems for Magnificent, Turbo-Loaded, Triple-Charged Children
Written by Jerry Pinto
ISBN: 9789389231557
Published by Talking Cub

You can buy a copy here

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Karthika Gopalakrishnan is the Head of Reading at Neev Academy, Bangalore, and the Director of the Neev Literature Festival. In the past, she has worked as a children’s book writer, editor, and content curator at Multistory Learning which ran a reading program for schools across south India. Prior to this, Karthika was a full-time print journalist with two national dailies. Her Twitter handle is g_karthika.