Poetry. Illustrated by Nicholas Garland. If you see a vulture, don’t play dead.

Childhood can be a confusing time, but not to Evan and Sage. They’ve got the world pretty well figured out, and are happy to explain it to their perplexed parents: A monkey and an ape are not the same, / said Sage. The monkey has a longer name. In this book of funny, fanciful poems and woodcuts, Eric McHenry and Nicholas Garland pay tender tribute to parents and the children who run circles around them.

The poems celebrate quotidian family life, centring on two children–Evan, seven, and Sage, two–and the questions they ask, the theories they have and the unexpected flashes they show of knowing exactly how the world really works, as the above poem demonstrates. The girl’s coy glance out at the reader is a typical Garland flourish, and elsewhere his woodcuts complement the mood of the poetry beautifully. –The Daily Telegraph (UK)