It’s one of those certainties like death or taxes: after an author reading, someone in the audience will invariably ask, “Where do you get your ideas?” Without saying where, exactly, children’s poet Loris Lesynski ponders a related question in verse:

Why…?
I did it because –
well the reason was –
it was really because because…
I did it because –
because everyone does –
because because because.

Even if the why of poetry is sometimes hard to explain, Lesynski has no trouble discussing the how in a poetry collection that also provides a good amount of instruction for the youngest of writers. Concepts such as onomatopoeia, metre, and personification are explained in everyday, kid-friendly language, using Lesynski’s own poems as examples. Most of the 39 poems were selected from the poet’s other collections, such as Nothing Beats a Pizza and Zigzag: Zoems for Zindergarten. Four are new creations.

This is the first book of Lesynski’s that she hasn’t illustrated herself. Instead, well-known picture book illustrator Michael Martchenko reinterprets these poems in his own distinctive style, using pencil, watercolour, and gouache.

In “The Bad Mood Blues,” Martchenko creates a scene featuring eight small, pudgy creatures bent on starting a young boy’s day in the worst way. In the original Nothing Beats a Pizza version, Lesynski played up the rhythmic aspect of the poem by showing a beatnik-style blues trio. While the new illustrations are colourful, fun, and refreshing, the feel of the previous books has still been maintained, largely due to the same lively book design and layout.

Good advice abounds for picking poem topics, making interesting word and sound choices, and reading poems aloud. A handy rhyme chart, a bibliography, and website listings are just a few of the extras. Teachers of poetry will want this dual-purpose collection for their classrooms because Lesynski shows that poem writing can and should be fun with an irresistible selection of contagiously rhythmic poems.