Renovated Rhymes

Teya Rosenberg is an assistant professor of English specializing in
children’s literature at Southwest Texas State University.

Renovated Rhymes, a collection of 33 nursery rhymes rewritten as
sonnets, is another contribution to the seemingly endless supply of
traditional materials (such as folk tales) reworked for humorous effect.
While there are amusing entries in this field, such rewriting begins to
seem an exercise for those who have no other ideas or for those who want
an intellectual task while overcoming writer’s block. Hicks’s
efforts seem to belong to the latter category. One marvels at the
ingenuity of stretching brief nursery rhymes into 14 lines, and at the
work required to maintain the set rhyme schemes. There are some amusing
lines, such as the one that concludes the renovated “Humpty Dumpty”:
“This coddled chap who once made such a splash / Might have fared
better had he been hard-boiled.” More often, however, the resulting
poems are labored, as with these lines from “There Was a Little
Man”: “His ammunition was of grade A lead, / As this removed the
element of luck, / He found, from situations where a duck / Or other
quarry, being brained, fell dead.”

The strength of this book lies in Victor Gad’s design and artwork.
The illustrations throughout, done in a pastiche of photographs and
drawings, are frequently more amusing than the poems they illustrate.
Not recommended.