The Man in the Moon-Fixer's Mask

In the world of children's books you'll often find authors of adult fiction attempt the tricky switch to a much younger audience. Some authors, like E.B. White, are comfortable writing for people of all ages. For most, however, the switch tends to feel unnatural. What pleases a grown-up won't suit a child, and oftentimes adult writers have some pretty funny ideas about what is appropriate or, more importantly, fun for kids. Until now, I've never seen an adult poet attempt the same switch. JonArno Lawson is perhaps best known for serious works like, "Love Is an Observant Traveller" and "Inklings". A native of Toronto, the fellow has two children. Logical then that he'd try his hand at a field dominated by Shel Silverstein/Douglas Florian types. To my relief, "The Man In the Moon-Fixer's Mask" is, by and large, a success. Lawson has yet to fully grasp exactly who his audience (or age range for that matter) is, but the book is often a purely enjoyable read. I wouldn't give this to a kid looking for Jack Prelutsky-type rhymes, but for older children just verging on their teens, this might be just the right slow, thoughtful gift to give them on the sly. Forty-five poems make up this small, slim book. Few of these last for any longer than a page, but each one is capable of conjuring up wholly new worlds. In "The Empty-Headed Scarecrow", we hear of a creature that comes "at night / with blood-red rhubarb stalks / to pummel hollow pumpkin drums. / It's burlap voice is dry as straw." Or there's a quick dip with the Gazdinks in the Gond who locate a money pond containing, "Dragonflies with wings of dime / The mud a crush of copper pennies." Alongside JonArno's words are the sometimes surreal, sometimes serious pictures of Sherwin Tija. So is this a book of kids? Yeeeees, I say hesitantly. It certainly tries to be, most of the time. It's funny how often Lawson will write a poem that combines two animals together like an ostrich with a rhino (a great picture accompanies that one) or a hippo with a possum. There are also some excellent tongue-twisting rhymes that shake the reader out of their complacency (as with "The Great Snoth of Snitch-on-the-Snotch"). Yet sometimes it seems clear that Lawson should really be turning his sights towards teen readers. "My Garden Breeds a Savage Bloom" is a truly lovely poem. It contains heady sentences like, "Under the glowering / goat-lidded loom / of my garden's / savage bloom." But only a few kids are going to appreciate what the poet is doing here. Likewise the poem "Talking in the Caucasus" (the title alone should warn you) is so smart and complicated and doggone difficult to pronounce that no one under the age of fourteen would even attempt it. You're not going to hand a child who has finally grown comfortable learning to read aloud a poem that contains lines like, "Bagvalal, Batsbi, Botlikh, and Buduhk / there's Chechen and Chamalal / also Circassian (some use Cherkess and some Kabardin