A Chocolate Box Menagerie

<p><em>A Chocolate Box Menagerie</em> is a wonderful little volume of charming poems full of strange creatures with recognizable personalities. Freeman explores the child's world in which there is no distinction between animate and inanimate. A packet of spaghetti is as likely to be looking for love as a sparrow. Starfish gaze at the night sky and wonder from where they've dropped. And bathroom mirrors live in constant torment unable to flee from what they have to witness every day!</p><p>We read of domestic dramas: the marmalade's bitterness towards the jam; the macaroon's attempt at singing and dancing; and the infidelity of a pickled herring. There are also many poems about exotically named animals.</p><p>The book is remarkable for its wit and inventiveness. Has anyone written before about the yearnings of a bacon sandwich or told of the tragic life of a coat hanger? Who has ever thought to create a world peopled by letters of the alphabet? And all this is done with the enduring grace and beauty of meter and rhyme that will surely appeal to all ages.</p>