Poetry: A Hatful of Dragons

A Hatful of Dragons: And More Than 13.8 Billion Other Funny Poems
By Vikram Madan

Madan, Vikram. A Hatful of Dragons: and More than 13.8 Billion Other Funny Poems. New York, NY: WordSong an imprint of Boyds Mills & Kane, 2020. 9781684371501

Plot Summary

This humorous poetry book is filled with poems about a panda, a pangolin, a box of mail-order eggs that surprisingly hatch dinosaurs when we expected dragons, aliens with a garden gnome pal, a tiny ghost, a robot uncle, dragons galore, an unruly bunch of clams, slobberly slobs, and more! Some poems are connected and each illustration is expressive in this delightful book of silly nonsense. 

Analysis

Vikram Madan has created a poetry book that is filled to the brim with humor, a wide range of subjects, and recurring characters.  Every page has expressive black and white illustrations that personify each poem, like the ten tiny aliens and their garden-gnome pal in the poem Permanent Guests who build their home in an occupied shoe. Later in the book, these characters are seen again in their shoe home, as the man wearing the shoe walks across the page. Readers will delight in searching for a professor who built a Page Machine that lets him hop from page to page. Including recurring characters that can be seen on multiple pages gives readers extra enjoyment as they begin to notice and search for the clues in each connecting poem. Another example of recurring characters are the girl and the crab from Taxi Crab who cause a ruckus in the taxi and get dropped off back on page 7. Readers will find themselves flipping back and forth between the pages to spot each character again.

One interesting poem is the 13,841,287,201 Nonsense Poems In One, which is a fill-in-the-blank poem that lets readers build their own poem from a list of options on the opposite page. There are twelve blanks in this poem, with seven choices to fill each blank. Madan wrote a cracked concrete poem, titled Brouhaha. This poem features words that have fallen through the poem and onto the floor, leaving readers confused until they can put it back together again. The rebus poem, Australian Animal Chant is only made of pictures of animals from Australia with a key containing their names on the opposite page. Rhyme and rhythm are the key poetic elements present in this book and make this an ideal choice for reading aloud in a group.

Excerpt

PSSSSSSSTTT!!!

My name's Professor Dobbleydook,

Inventor of the Page Machine,

Which lets me travel through this book

To spy on any page or scene.

When traveling through space and rhyme

I like to go incognito.

Should you spot me some page, sometime

I hope you'll pause to say hello!

Connections

Separate the children into groups and print out copies of 13,841,287,201 Nonsense Poems In One out for each group. Cut out pieces of the fill-in-the-blank options found on the side. Have each group select a group of fill-in-the-blank pieces and combine them with the poem to create something new. Each group can then take turns presenting their new poems. After they share their new poems, give them paper and pencils to draw the characters like Madan has done for his book.

Review

A reviewer for Kirkus Reviews wrote that this poem was, "A loopily meta collection of silly, interactive poetry . . . The fun starts in the illustrations even before the poetry does, with characters that recur throughout the book . . . This collection will encourage several giggle-filled read-throughs."

“A HATFUL OF DRAGONS: And More Than 13.8 Billion Other Funny Poems.” 2020. Kirkus Reviews 88 (6): N.PAG. https://search-ebscohost-com.ezp.twu.edu/login.aspx?direct=true&db=brd&AN=142188266&site=ehost-live.