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Mirror Mirror

a Book of Reversible Verse
Jun 06, 2015skyekilaen rated this title 4 out of 5 stars
As soon as I read the first page of this book, I knew my language-loving, puzzle-loving seven year old son was going to adore it. And I was right. :) His eyes lit up as we read the first pair of poems and he got what was happening. Each set of two "reverso" poems, on the same same page, is the same lines, the second reversed from the first. Only changes of punctuation and capitalization are allowed. And here they tell two different sides of the same fairy tale: Little Red Riding Hood and the wolf, Cinderella and her stepsisters, Beauty and the Beast. I'm blown away by the thought required to craft these forwards-backwards stories. So intriguing! Some of the poem sets are more successful than others, but overall the collection is very strong. The Sleeping Beauty and the Wide-Awake Prince is one of my favorites because of how perfectly it shows the "grass is always greener" effect. Mirror Mirror, the Snow White set, is chilling. Masse's split-screen painting for each set of poems is such a perfect match for the poems, it's amazing.