Weary of saccharine stories and tired themes when reading poetry for children? Angered at seeing your children indoctrinated into adhering to patriarchy, neoliberal capitalism, and general compliance with authority each time they open a book of verse?

I Can Say Interpellation remedies these problems by reconfiguring some of the best-known children’s rhymes for political purpose. Taking French theorist Guy Debord’s idea of detournement (a deflection or divergence of existing visual images and mass media), and applying it to children’s poetry, experimental poet Stephen Cain redeploys the rhymes and images of well-known juvenile poems against their dominant messages. The result is a new poetic landscape where the Fox in Socks becomes Marx on a Box, where Goodnight Moon is a meditation on possible nuclear annihilation, and The Owl and the Pussycat features debates on the importance of pre-emptive military strikes to U.S. foreign policy.

Humorous, yet politically insightful, I Can Say Interpellation is for very smart kids and for adults who want to keep them that way.