Mommy Daddy Evan Sage

If you see a vulture, don''t play dead.

Childhood can be a confusing time, but not to Evan and Sage. They''ve got the world pretty well figured out, and are happy to explain it to their perplexed parents: "A monkey and an ape are not the same," / said Sage. "The monkey has a longer name."

In this book of funny, fanciful poems and woodcuts, Eric McHenry and Nicholas Garland pay tender tribute to parents and the children who run circles around them.

Features 30 b&w illustrations.

"''A consequence,'' Sage said, ''is when / you take my favourite toy away / and I look at the floor and say / "Sorry" and get it back again.'' This is one of the 30-odd poems in a delightful new collection from Eric McHenry... illustrated with characteristic boldness by Nicholas Garland... The poems celebrate quotidian family life, centring on two children — Evan, seven, and Sage, two — and the questions they ask, the theories they have and the unexpected flashes they show of knowing exactly how the world really works, as the above poem demonstrates. The girl''s coy glance out at the reader is a typical Garland flourish, and elsewhere his woodcuts complement the mood of the poetry beautifully."
Toby Clements, The Daily Telegraph

"Composed almost entirely of rhymed couplets, this intimate, mischievous, and poignantly funny collection of poems shares the conversations, invented games, and minor squabbles of four family members, especially precocious siblings Evan and younger sister Sage... Garland''s chunky b&w woodcuts are a handsome complement, with an understated emotion that echoes that of the verse... The final poem, in which the father cradles Sage, perhaps best sums up the overall tone: ''"[W]hen you fuss or make a mess,/ it doesn''t make me love you less."/ She said that made her feel much better,/ and wiped her nose on my new sweater.''"

Eric McHenry grew up in Kansas. He is the author of Potscrubber Lullabies (Waywiser, 2006), winner of the Kate Tufts Discovery Award. He received the Theodore Roethke Prize in 2010. His poems have featured in The Guardian, and his articles in The New York Times Book Review and Slate, among others.

Nicholas Garland was born in London and studied at the Slade School of Fine Art. In 1966 he became the Daily Telegraph''s first political cartoonist. He has also contributed cartoons and covers to The New Statesman, The Spectator, Private Eye and The Independent. In 1998 he was awarded the Order of the British Empire. His son is the novelist Alex Garland.