Singing elephants, carousel horses that take flight, a dream helmet that will transport you anywhere – imagination reigns in this exuberant collection of poems. We hear echoes of poets as diverse as Robert Louis Stevenson (in the dream voyages) and Dennis Lee (in the playful use of Canadian place names), but New’s voice is all his own. These poems have strong rhythms and end-of-line rhymes, but they also experiment with internal rhymes and alliteration, combining homonyms, tongue-twisters (“Tick tock tackle tactic/Wintertime in Tuktoyaktuk”), and other delightful verbal tricks. The language is often challenging, but in ways that highlight the deliciousness of words (“A happy hippopotamus,/as garrulous and marvellous/as monkeys wearing cardigans”). The cleverest poem here is “The Knock-Kneed Knight,” which is full of those mysterious silent letters that perplex learners of English. Here, New brilliantly turns the silent letters into a game, teaching young readers how to pronounce these words by rhyming them with simpler words that sound the same: “Distraught, he shouted I want out/Fraught, he dithered in a drought/of commonsense solutions – Ow, /he bellowed at a bough.” The many types of poems offer something for everyone and enough zany situations to keep young readers interested.

Bevis’s bright, energetic illustrations are a perfect match for New’s poetry. At times they are so full of energy that they almost lift off the page. The visual motif of the dream helmet is cleverly repeated in various configurations throughout the book – often as a helmet, sometimes as a fountain or as notes blaring from a horn – thus lending unity to the collection.