"Mirror Mirror: A Book of Reversible Verse" by Marilyn Singer, with illustrations by Josée Masse

Yesterday, Mirror Mirror won the 2010 Cybils Award in the Poetry division. The winners are chosen because they "combined literary merit with kid appeal."

I actually purchased Mirror Mirror sometime last year because it combined interesting poetry techniques with fairytales. The first few entries were so witty, I had to go home and read the rest.

At the end of the book, Marilyn Singer states, "We read most poems down a page. But what if we read them up? That's the question I asked myself when I created the reverso. When you read a reverso down, it is one poem. When you read it up, with changes allowed only in punctuation and capitalization it is a different poem."

One of the things I loved in this picture book is that some of the poems feature the "hero/heroine" on one side and the "villain" on the other. It's amazing to see how different the same words/opinions come off. Here's an example of one of the flip poems that I particularly liked:

In the Hood
A:.....................................B:

In my hood,............................After all, Grandma's waiting,
skipping through the wood,.............mustn't dawdle...
carrying a basket,.....................But a girl!
picking berries to eat--...............What a treat--
juicy and sweet........................juicy and sweet,
what a treat!..........................picking berries to eat,
But a girl.............................carrying a basket,
musn't dawdle. ........................skipping through the wood
After all, Grandma's waiting. .........in my 'hood.

Sorry for the way I broke that up. It's not my favorite method, but blogspot strips the extra spaces away and I didn't want to use Photoshop because people with screen readers couldn't read the example. I suppose I could have written the second beneath the first, but in the book, they appear side-by-side. Doing it this way, you didn't have to scroll up and down. Sorry if it's inconvenient!

From classic tales such as Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella to beloved stories such as Hansel and Gretel and Jack and the Beanstalk, there are reversible poem stories for everyone. While the poetry doesn't hold up as anything special on its own, the charm comes when reading the poems side-by side. The book is further enhanced by the lovely illustrations created by Josée Masse. Each image splits down the middle in a fashion that never looks choppy, but eye-catching and fun. One example of a "split" can be seen in the above cover image.

Overall, this was a fun picturebook discovery that I really enjoy reading. I was really happy it won in its category for the Cybils Award!


This is the first time I've reviewed a picture book, but I have a couple others I've picked up due to how different and interesting they are. Would you be interested in future picture book reviews? I don't have many myself because, um, no children, but there are some really lovely books out there!