Luke and Leo Build a Limerick is part of the Poetry Builders Series to teach kids about all sorts of poetry types. This one, by Marybeth Mataya, focuses on limericks. Friends Luke and Leo leave a playful limerick poem on a doorstep for Lizzie as an April Fool's joke. Lizzie loves it and wants to learn how to write limericks herself. These five line poems have a rhyme pattern. The first two lines rhyme with one another, the middle two rhyme with one another, and the final, fifth line rhymes with the first two lines. Limercis are usually playful poems and that final line often has an amusing twist. Alliteration and rhythm were also touched upon in this book.

My cubs and I read this together. The artwork is just lovely. I feel it did a good job teaching kids the basics of limericks, and it even included some well-known limericks. I'm a poet myself, and I've dabbled in this form. I really have to be in the mood and mindset to write limericks, but several of my cubs loved this style. I think it’s a great early advanced form to teach budding poets. The end of the book has more detailed instructions regarding this form. Highly recommended for any teacher with a poetic bent. A must for all school libraries.

***Many thanks to Netgalley and Norwood Press for providing an egalley in exchange for a fair and honest review.

This is such a great series to introduce students to the nuances of poetic forms! In this book, we learn about limericks which is tied with haikus as my students’ favorite poetic form.

My daughter thoroughly enjoyed this book, and read it more than once. After reading it, she wrote her own limericks.

In a very child-friendly narrative, four kids gather in a park and make up limerick poems about each other. By the end of the simple story the reader will have had all the basics they need, and met with easy instruction to do the same. It's a great primer for the young poet, with technical terms in bold ready for the end glossary, and the rhyming scheme when first seen is in different colours. No, it's not the most realistic story, with memorised verses brought out willy-nilly, and many mentally composed at the drop of a hat, but stuff those criticisms – this is fine.

2.5 to 3★
"'Quick, Luke,' croaked Leo from behind the garbage can.
'Ring the doorbell and run!'

Luke jammed the paper under a rock, slapped the doorbell, and off they zipped, grinning. Just then, a teenager with ear buds in her ears danced out. The boys spied her from behind the neighbor’s bushes.

'Hey, Lizzie,' she hollered, waving the paper. You’ve got a love note. Look at this—"

The boys have written her a teasing limerick, and it catches the fancy of both sisters who start giggling.

My Goodreads review includes an illustration of Luke and Leo running away after leaving a limerick for a girl.

Long story short, the kids get together and practise making up more limericks. I admired the fact that the authors didn't let the kids get away with poor rhymes (didn't allow "missy" to rhyme with "dizzy", for example). And they were pretty strict about the meter, too.

I was a little disturbed that they stated that limericks first started in Limerick, Ireland. A quick google will show that nobody is exactly sure how they got the name limerick, but one suggestion is that an early one was sung to the Irish tune of "Will you come up to Limerick?" According to britannica.com, this was a song that added verses of "subtle innuendo", as they politely put it.

I'm being pedantic, I realise, but if this is to teach kids, we might as well not perpetuate popular suppositions. Dirty limericks are certainly popular, some not so subtle, but the kids don't need to know that. They'll find out soon enough.

The kids wander around playing - lots of colourful illustrations - and making up verses, writing in chalk on the sidewalk and such.

I'm all for promoting word-play and creative thinking, so I gave it three stars for that. Thanks to NetGalley and Norwood House Press for the copy for review.