The Red Ear Blows Its Nose

The Red Ear Blows Its Nose dishes out uproarious hilarity, cutting wit, wordplay, and sobering wisdom in an illustrated collection of poems for children and others. It considers thinking and the brain, identity and what it means to be a person, nature and the seasons, and assorted creatures, including a horse who says “Moo.” This debut collection from Robert Schechter proves to be the work of a master, complemented by S. Federico’s stunning illustrations, which visually leap off the page. This collection is an experience not to be missed.


PRAISE FOR THE RED EAR BLOWS ITS NOSE:


Short, punchy, and clever poems, as if Shel Silverstein and Ogden Nash had a baby. Some are only two lines long. My favorite: “When livestock salesmen cannot sleep, / do they lie in bed discounting sheep?” Wow!

—Jane Yolen, author of the How Do Dinosaurs books


What a splendid collection of poetry. Here are poems that fizz with imagination, wisdom, and an infectious exuberance at the sheer wonder of words. Beautifully crafted and terrifically funny, this is a book for children (and grown-ups) to return to again and again.

—Kate Wakeling, winner, 2017 CLiPPA (UK)


You’ll feel like a “cool in-the-know one” when you read Robert Schechter’s clever collection of poems. This book will open your mind up to a world where foxes cartwheel through trombones, a horse might choose to moo, and you can dive into a lake filled with yellow puffs of popcorn. Children who are reading (and thinking) beyond their age level will love it; you will, too. If you’re a fan of John Ciardi and Richard Wilbur and X. J. Kennedy, or Jack Prelutsky and J. Patrick Lewis and Kenn Nesbitt, you’ll want to add Robert Schechter to your list of favorite poets!

—Janet Wong, winner of the 2021 NCTE Award for Excellence in Poetry for Children


The Red Ear Blows Its Nose is a dazzling tour de force of ingenious poems that sparkle with Schechter’s witty, wonderful wordplay. Read this book. Your brain will thank you. Mine did.

—Kenn Nesbitt, former Children’s Poet Laureate (2013–15)


Robert Schechter’s poems sing with irrepressible joy. His humor, wit, and verbal dexterity make The Red Ear Blows Its Nose a book that both children and adults will want to read over and over and over again. He is clearly one of the most accomplished poets writing for children today.

—Valerie Bloom MBE, winner, 2022 CLiPPA (UK)


Schechter’s The Red Ear Blows Its Nose is a masterful collection from a masterful poet. Not only does every poem take you somewhere new, spinning ideas and jokes and thoughts and dreams and facts and observations on the tip of its finger like a Harlem Globetrotter at a showing-off convention, but it does so with such surefootedness, such deft rhythm and rhyme, that the poems are joys to read aloud. They sing themselves out of your mouth and will stick in the minds of kids and grown-ups everywhere they get heard. Schechter, it seems to me, is way up there with the great American kids’ poets, a real Shel Silverstein for today’s generation.

—A. F. Harrold


It’s entertaining—sometimes hilarious, sometimes beautiful, always thought-provoking—and nothing short of brilliant.

—Diana Murray, author of City Shapes, Summer Color! and the Unicorn Day series


ABOUT THE AUTHORS:


Robert Schechter’s award-winning poetry for children has appeared in Highlights for Children, Cricket, Spider, Ladybug, the Caterpillar, Blast Off, Countdown, Orbit, and more than a dozen anthologies published by Bloomsbury, National Geographic, Macmillan, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, the Emma Press, and Little, Brown Books for Young Readers. His poems for adults have won both the Willis Barnstone Translation Prize and the X. J. Kennedy Parody Award, and his verse often appears in the Washington Post Style Invitational (where he is a former Rookie and Loser of the Year) and in the Spectator magazine’s weekly humor competition. Robert is the editor of the children’s poetry section of Better Than Starbucks. This is his first collection.

S. Federico draws, writes, and lives in New York City with his cat.