Runny Babbit: A Billy Sook

Runny Babbit lent to wunch And heard the saitress way,
"We have some lovely stabbit rew —
Our Special for today."

From the legendary creator of Where the Sidewalk Ends, A Light in the Attic, Falling Up, and The Giving Tree comes an unforgettable new character in children's literature.

Welcome to the world of Runny Babbit and his friends Toe Jurtle, Skertie Gunk, Rirty Dat, Dungry Hog, Snerry Jake, and many others who speak a topsy-turvy language all their own.

So if you say, "Let's bead a rook That's billy as can se,"
You're talkin' Runny Babbit talk,
Just like mim and he.

Child Magazine

In case the title hasn't clued you in, this is indeed a silly book about a bunny rabbit. Flip-flopped consonants add to the loony, never-before-published poems of the late, legendary Silverstein. In "Runny Bakes a Tath," the eponymous hero was so hungry "he chewed his dubber rucky up,/He gulped boap subbles, too./But what upset his mamma most/Was shrinking the dampoo." Zany pen-and-ink drawings work in tandem with the poems to maximize the laughs. (ages 6 to 8)
Child magazine's Best Children's Book Awards 2005

Not only was Shel Silverstein one of the funniest children s book authors, he was also one of the most subversive. Through his irresistible rhymes, poems, and drawings, Silverstein made children feel like they were being spoken to as adults; and adults the chance to remember what it felt like to be a child.