Like an original Shel Silverstein, or at least the Victorian variety. Mum shared this with me when I was little, and it still holds a dear place in my heart. We lived in England, and each night before school I'd read. This book was often my friend through the night. All night long I'd read, and later my mum would tell me of her own love for the Dong and the Jumblies, and still I love this book so much. Once he catches your heart and mind, it belongs to him forever.

Fun to read, the limericks were funny and my favorite poem is the jumbles, I also liked the pobble who has no toes, and the owl and the pussycat. And the nonsense botany was pretty funny. The Alfabet poems were fun.

This book includes a series of Nonsense from the author but i love most is the 'Nonsense Alphabets'. You will eventually find yourself read out loud all those poems and laugh a lot.

However, the rest of the book is a little boring to me, esp. 'A book of nonsense' even the illustrations seem funny and very interesting though.

Poetry is sometimes hard to get into, but I really liked this book of nonsense. The short stories were cute as well. I wish Lear had written more such silliness!

Lear's sensibility obviously inspired subsequent geniuses as diverse as Dr. Seuss, Edward Gorey, and Monty Python, among others.

"There was an Old Person of Cromer,
Who stood on one leg to read Homer,
When he found he grew stiff, he jumped over the cliff,
Which concluded that Person of Cromer."

Nonsensical? Yes. Delightful? Absolutely.

I actually read the Poetry SOciety of America's version, but the only reason I read this was because a youtuber said it was difficult in one sitting. The collection also ended up having a Yeats poem that I fell in love with. Quite the experience. Some of the poems truly did make no sense.

Turns out I don't like Edward Lear as much as I thought I would.

Very short, repetitive, and similar rhymes for children.
We didn't enjoy many of them and didn't want to finish.

Read with my 8yo to cross off the '1001 Children's Books to Read Before You Grow Up' list.

C'è tutto in questo libro: il senso del nonsenso e il nonsenso del senso. Non è un gioco di parole, ma una sfida a capire.

Lear wrote in England in the late 1800s, and is the predecessor of much comedy and comic writing.

Reading his silly limericks, you can see what Roald Dahl and Monty Python grew out of. I remember some of these as a child, The Owl and the Pussycat, and this little gem

There was an Old Man with a beard,
Who said, "It is just as I feared! --
Two Owls and a Hen, four Larks and a Wren,
Have all built their nests in my beard.

The edition I read had lots of drawings, which really pull it together. Some are simply silly - which was great fun.

A delightful collection of nonsense poetry--for children and for adults. The vocabulary is at a surprisingly high level--after just about every limerick, the girls asked for the definition of at least one word. Light and fun and marvelously absurd.