Frankenstein Takes the Cake- New Favorite Poetry Book Review

Rex, A. (2008). Frankenstein takes the cake. Orlando: Harcourt.

In this follow-up to Frankenstein Makes a Sandwich, Rex uses many of the same zany characters to create an insanely funny collection. If you’ve heard of fractured fairy tales, Rex’s work would be better described as fractured monster poems. He takes many of the spooky characters we know, such as the Headless Horseman, Dracula, and Edgar Allan Poe’s flock of ravens, and turns them into fallible, eccentric monsters-next-door.

Rex relies heavily on rhyme, allusion, and altered traditional folklore to induce side-splitting laughter. Like other fractured fairy tales, these poems will probably appeal to middle-grade to older students who’ve been exposed to the likes of Poe’s famous “The Raven,” blogging and Hitchcock's Birds to understand the somewhat advanced humor Rex creates.

Rex’s own artwork graces the pages and ranges from goth depictions of Poe, to a Chinese-brushstroke-inspired Godzilla, to a Peanuts-style comic book storyboard in “Dracula Jr. Wants a Big-Boy Coffin.”

My personal favorites are the three interspersed installments of Off the Top of My Head: The Official Blog of the Headless Horseman, which are complete with “real-life” photographs of the curmudgeonly pumpkin-head about town. I’ll leave you with the submission from October 5, 2008:

Please Stop Staring at My Delicious Head
by Adam Rex

It’s supposed
to be scary,
you know.

But this morning
I rode by a little cafe,
and it said pumpkin bisque
was their soup of the day.
As I passed, the chef stared
in the creepiest way.

Heaven knows how the crows always find me.
Or the pigeons that fly by but sneak up behind me,
then poke in their heads
to pick seeds through my eyes.
And although I hate pigeons,
I really despise
how the crows go all Hitchcock,
and day turns into night
as they claw and they caw
and they snap and they bite
and then back to the branches
or god knows what place;
and the flapping’s like clapping,
the caws are applause
for my big, orange, delectable face.

And these grandmas
won’t leave me alone.
They surround me and talk
about muffins and bread.
Or they hound me with
piecrusts and poke at my head.
“It’s a good one,” they whisper.
I wish I was dead.


Thank you, Mr. Rex, for the laughter you bring!