THREE REVIEWS

YOUR CAT & OTHER SPACE ALIENS by Mary Turzillo, Berlin CT and Cleveland OH; 2007. vanZeno Press Professional Reading Series, $19.95, ISBN 978-0-9789244-0-9, pb

THE DRAGON DICTIONARY by Meg Simon and Mary Turzillo, Cedar Rapids, IA; 2010,Sam's Dot, $6.00, ISBN 978-1-935590-14-9, pb

DRAGON SOUP by Marge Simon & Mary Turzillo, Cleveland OH and Berlin CT, 2008, vanZeno Press Professional Reading Series,$19,95, ISBN 978-0-9789244-5-4, pb

First let me make this clear.  All three of these collections are well worth the price and well worth ordering, which you can do through Amazon the last I knew.  These collections are excellent showcases for something thats gets overlooked too often in poetry, humor.

The first collection is a whimisical which I know is an over used term but in this case well deserved.  The poems are about observations on the behavior of critters that are not human.  As you can tell from the title, cats and their moods are the focus of many of these poems.  It is not all humorous poetry.  For example there is a fine poem about Wayne Gacy titled 'Gacy' that is neither cute or cuddly.

'In Jack's dream
we live with John Wayne Gacy.
Something is wrong, Jack says, but I don't seem to care..."

However this first stanza from the poem 'Oath of the Moon' is more typical of the collection

"Whiskers smelling of milk and tuna,
he slink's into his mistress's bedroom
intent on rubbing against her legs
and,since he is tonight her same species,
further up.  Beware werecat's mistress,
the front claws,the barbed penis. ''"

THE DRAGON DICTIONARY is what it says it is.  Its basically a light hearted twist on Ambrose Bierce's  THE DEVIL'S DICTIONARY.    Only its aimed at D & D'ers and fans of light fantasy novels that have dragons on their covers.  Most of these definitions rvolve dragons and all their quibbles and dragony ways.  The definitions are interspered with poetry and the artful ilustrations created by Marge Simon..  It can be a little too cutesy for some but I enjoyed it and I usually have a low tolerance for cutesy.  However Simon'sketch of a lady dragon singing 'the hills are alive.." won me over.  Your daughter/female relative/female offspring of friends are going to love it.  Maybe it get their minds off of undernourished boy vampires.

DRAGON SOUP is not a collaboration but rather a collection of poems and flash fiction by Simon and a collection of poems and flash fiction.  Almost all the pieces are humorous work about dragons and illustrated by Simon.  As I said before I have a low toleration of whimsey but I enjoyed the poems and flash fiction.  You dont have to be a dedicated dracophile to enjoy this collection.  Like the previous collection it would make a great gift to wean young females from their fascination with wain male vampires and young lads with buxum vampirettes.  It is well worth buying it for tour self.

Do yourselff a favor for the gift buying season buy all three from Amazon and lo and behold this site has a portal to Amazon (hint).