Book Review: Tales of Whimsy Verses of Woe

Title: Tales of Whimsy Verses of Woe 

Author: Tim DeRoche

Date: 2023

Publisher: Redtail

ISBN: 978-0-9992776-1-4

Length: 99 pages

Illustrations: drawings by Daniel Gonzalez

Quote: "If your moral character is flimsy / Or your wit be rather slow, / Oh dare not read these tales of whimsy / For often do they end in woe."

This book would have you know that it received a "Baldersquash Medal"! Also awarded to the works of Edward Lear, Dr. Seuss, Edward Gorey, Shel Silverstein, and Lemony Snicket! (And others.)

These poems, and the drawings that accompany them, remind one of all five of those geniuses. 

It's unfortunate that the first and last poems, which people picking up a book in a store, would be likely to read first, are likely to put people off, because what's in between them is good clean hilarity. Here be mudpie shakes with hollandaise, a gallant prince who decides not to kill the wild beast that he's heard killed his father, a young couple who set out to paint all the green things on Earth red or blue, a fish who wants to be eaten by the king, a Jabberwock that doesn't need slaying, and more. 

The first poem, in which a girl's head explodes from studying too much, advises the child reader Silverstein-fashion to tell this story to parents who tell them to do their homework. If they do, the kids certainly ought to get a little extra reading about how that kind of thing was used in the past to discourage little girls from letting themselves do better than little boys at school. The last poem, in a boy claims God told him that God looks forward to seeing him "up here" when he dies, leaves me wondering whether to say "You shouldn't make up stories like that about serious things!" or to feel sorry for the parents who might be about to lose their son. So they're not quite up to the Lear, Seuss, Gorey, Silverstein, Snicket level of quality. 

But then you'll want to know what happened when:

"The King of the Land

Had a band.

They practiced their punk.

But they stunk."

Or: 

"...my bathroom faucet cannot make me clean,

Since it brings only lukewarm gasoline."

These poems won't disappoint you. Neither will the pictures, which are too detailed to be cartoons and too goofy to be baroque, and delight the parts of my brain that like both of those genres. Somewhere in my mind Silverstein, Carolyn Wells, and Gelett Burgess laughed out loud and agreed, "The trouble with this book is that it's too short."