A Foot in the Mouth: Poems to Speak, Sing and Shout

Turn up the sound An award-winning duo returns with a playfully enticing ode to the pleasures of reading poetry aloud.

Whether rhyming, tongue-tying, or defying structure, here are more than three dozen poems that simply beg to be read aloud. The creators of A Poke in the I and A Kick in the Head complete a triplet with this collection of lively rhymes and tricky tongue twisters, poems for more than one voice, bilingual poems -- and poems that may just inspire kids to memorize them. Paul B. Janeczko offers a range of gems, from classic Shakespeare and Lear to anonymous rhymes to contemporary riffs on everything under the sun, while Chris Raschka counterpoints with the vibrant accents of his wittily detailed artwork.

Paul B. Janeczko (1945-2019) was a poet and teacher who edited numerous award-winning poetry anthologies for young people, including A Poke in the I, A Kick in the Head, A Foot in the Mouth, and The Death of the Hat, all of which were illustrated by Chris Raschka; Firefly July, illustrated by Melissa Sweet; and The Proper Way to Meet a Hedgehog and Other How-To Poems, illustrated by Richard Jones. He also wrote Worlds Afire; Requiem: Poems of the Terezín Ghetto; Top Secret: A Handbook of Codes, Ciphers, and Secret Writing; Double Cross: Deception Techniques in War; The Dark Game: True Spy Stories from Invisible Ink to CIA Moles, a finalist for the YALSA Award for Excellence in Nonfiction for Young Adults; and Secret Soldiers: How the U.S. Twenty-Third Special Troops Fooled the Nazis.

Chris Raschka is a Caldecott Award-winning illustrator of more than twenty books for children, including I Pledge Allegiance, A Child’s Christmas In Wales, and The Grasshopper’s Song. He lives in New York City.