Plain Crazy
Tom Skinner
language
(Pink Hippo Press, Sept. 1, 2014)
What if your kids thought playing with words and ideas was incredibly fun?‘It's witty and entertaining. The drawings are funny.’Kids and teens love ideas from left field, a play on words that makes them giggle and stretches their creative language skills.‘Definitely good for a quick giggle.’Call it what you will this quick ‘n’ quirky combination of poetry, youthful humor, silly phrases, puns and sketches is designed to challenge developing brains to look at language – and life – from a whole new perspective.Plain Crazy is now boarding for playful comments and musings on flying, marriage, eating, anger, flexibility and shopping.Encourage the young readers in your life to let loose with mad word associations, silly syllables and gormless giggles…in the bean bag with you, the car, or anywhere at all.As a parent or teacher, you have probably already had some fun together with word association, punning, and experimentation via various forms of literature.Eight short and swift illustrated one page stories in crisp and quirky verse for sagacious readers (ages 8-15) who up to speed.Buy Plain Crazy to have some unexpected fun with verse today!Note: Plain Crazy is the fourth book in the Get Your Wordsworth series. The other books, which can be read in any order are…Einstein's Cat...Pavlov's Dog...It's Slapstick...Too Much TV...Tractor Gate...OverloadBooks 1-6 are also available as a box set for $4.99 (Get Your Wordsworth, Volume 1)So, what makes the Get Your Wordsworth series special? It's a mix of things, really. When I set out to write these books, I wanted to create a new type of poetry. A poetry-prose hybrid that was much less rigid, formal or technical than the traditional model and one that did not bore the buttocks off bright young people.Hence the highly unorthodox format, combining a newspaper style title and sub-title, an original hand-drawn high quality sketch for each poem plus a personal author insight or pun were all designed to make verse more accessible and digestible for middle grade readers.Overall, the Get Your Wordsworth series is designed for those, young and old alike, who appreciate the English language in all its nuanced, layered and textured glory and who can handle a judicious mix of the super silly and gently philosophical all imbued with a healthy dose of wry and dry humor!What words would you, as a modern muse, use to describe this series? It’s tough to describe because Get Your Wordsworth seems to be a totally new style of fiction…one that combines a timeless art form (poetry) with a couple of unorthodox twists and tweaks...one for the early adopters and mavericks perhaps!Overall, I call these poetry-prose mash-ups ‘fast blasts’. But a quick brainstorm also unearthed the following possible descriptions!casual poetry-proseshort story poemsquirky poetry-prose fusionlaugh now, think later versemicro poetry-proseillustrated micro fictionrap trapsgenre-busting poetry-proseone minute super shortspictorial poetry-prosebite-size bedtime readsplayful poetrycheeky poetry chunkspoetry-prose hybridlittle book of laughs