Rhyme Stew
by Roald Dahl; ill. Quentin Blake (Jonathan Cape, 1989)
Lame poetry that, otherwise treated, could have become classic illustrated short stories. Dahl’s rhymes are too simplistic for grown-ups, yet too adult for young readers (the cover explicitly says so, though everything else about the book’s presentation screams ‘children’). A perplexing offering.
Now We Are Six Hundred: A Collection of Time Lord Verse
by James Goss; ill. Russell T Davies (BBC Books, 2017)
By themselves Davies’ illustrations would make this a 4-star book, but the unmitigated celery stick of Goss’s verse (so-called) diminishes this to a dudgeon-inducing 1-star cash-in from the direst depths of e-space. Utterly unreadable to poets, Doctor Who fans and everyone else.