POETRY FRIDAY Bad behavior that's good

Don't Forget Your Etiquette: The Essential Guide to Misbehavior
by David Greenberg; illustrated by Nadine Bernard Westcott

Okay, so just what is the protocol for bathing with gerbils? Is it ever appropriate to spank your parents? And that whole bit about sitting still ... does it have to last until rigor mortis sets in?

I'm so glad Greenberg's around to ask. Though my Dad used to crack jokes about Miss Information, Greenberg's revived her with a few contemporary twists, like dragging your laptop into the bathroom while your siblings are waiting to pee.

Time to drain the tub?
No need to ask your Mommy.
Just snap the front door open --
And crate your own tsunami!

Fiercely funny, unpredictable rhymes top punchy quatrains that roar from one bad behavior to the next, even when he has to twist a word into new shapes, Ogden Nash-style; 

There are just two types of kids:
Kids with proper etiquette,
Then all the other foolish ones
Who simply do not getiquette. 

Oh, there's real advice here, in the form of quotes from the usual suspects:  Letitia Baldridge, Miss Manners and Emily Post.

But none of those doyennes of proper comportment can advise how to lock the babysitter in your bedroom or the proper way to insert a fish into a blender. (Am I the only one who remembers Bass-O-Matic? Am I that old?)

Bernard Westcott fills pages with Miss Information's eye-popping antics, all stretched and squiggly silliness in ink and watercolor. Fun stuff, but hide this one when company comes over.

Rating: *\*\*\

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