My niece requested this book and, even as much as I hate tongue twisters, I couldn't turn down a request to read to her. I bumbled through beetle battles and socks on Mr. Knox and cheered when Mr. Knox finally shoved the fox in a bottle on a poodle in the middle of a paddle battle in a puddle. :-p

Edited on July 2, 2022: My daughter is older now, and loved this book. She cracked up and laughed the whole time. This book is so much fun, and I am so ready for my son to start enjoying it more.

This book was a tongue twister. You can try to read it slower, but it just sounds better if you read it fast. The sentences are pretty short, and so much fun.

I enjoyed this book more than my toddler. She laughed a few times, but I think since she couldn’t really understand what I was saying, she didn’t really care that much.

My husband and I were laughing the whole time I was reading this book, though.

I can’t wait until my little one starts reading, and can try this one on her own, because I think she’ll enjoy it more.

This is a buddy cop story about one down-on-his-luck, jaded old detective named Knox and a scrappy new deputy named Fox. Fox is the sort of guy who travels the whole world with nothing on his feet but socks. Knox is the kind you box in.

Fox points out early on how Knox puts himself in a box at the station. Knox responds by trying to get Fox in the same box. Fox responds by trying to get Knox to parade around the world in nothing but blue socks like himself. Knox ignores him.

So to get his attention, Officer Fox gets a whole bunch of chicks to come. Some are time bound type-A chicks. Some are creative, almost childish block building types. Others are blue collar brick layers. Fox tries to get Knox to let at least one of these chicks turn a trick for him.

Covering their blue collar and creative shifts at work, Fox gives the chicks time with Knox. Knox doesn't really respond to all of this, so Fox tries to get involved with the chicks too. Knox tells him he'd rather have a bedroom full of bricks than chicks, for all the good it does his detective work. He begs Fox off.

Who apologizes.

Then brings a single girl named Sue onto the crime scene, herself wearing socks and no shoes like a little fae creature. She's the kind of girl who does her own sewing.

"See?" Fox asks Knox.
Knox admits it's a rather difficult thing to do one's own sewing. But he waits too long.

Who comes? Crow comes. Slow Joe Crow comes. He's the kind of guy that can sew too and so he and Sue swap sewing. Fox tries to distract her by getting her to sew his sox and stay in the department.

But meanwhile, Slow Joe Crow catches Knox and sews him into that box he's built for himself. It's even worse now. Sue retaliates by sewing Slow Joe Crow's rose to him.

Knox gets tired of this and tries to go on a holiday.

Fox crashes it by taking him to this environmental disaster, this superfund site where the water of the river has turned to blue goo. Even the geese are eating the stuff. Fox, the naive youngster, encourages Knox to try some.

Knox sees it for what it is: poison. So he bails.

Fox at this point is sultry, but isn't showing it. He's keeping his outward sunny disposition but tries this passive aggressive tactic of pointing to another duo, another team, another set of buddy cops in the department. Bim and Ben. These guys are the servants of the entire police force — the "serve" you so seldom see in the "protect and serve;" not to mention how seldom we also see the "protect" bit. Anyways, when Bim and Ben aren't filing paperwork or patrolling the streets, these guys literally sweep all the floors before janitorial shifts begin. So much so that they even break their brooms with all of the sweeping. They rally the pigs to play in two separate bands, both percussive, but one's more of a drumline and the other more of a xylophone squad.

Knox isn't impressed. He sees through the comparison and doesn't care: he doesn't want a buddy or to be a buddy cop.

Fox does it again with another duo, Luke and Duck. These two lick clean water straight out of a single source aquifer nearby, in contrast with the superfund site from earlier. Knox doesn't buy this eaither and they spend time staring at each other eating cheese while the breeze blows through the flea infested trees.

Their talk's interrupted by a gang known as the Tweetle Beetles. Rather dumb name for a gang, considering the rest, but they start battling it with fists, then escalate to paddles, they end up in this warehouse-sized bottle they fill with muddled water. There's a French poodle that prefers Italian food. I'm only assuming the poodle's name is Shakespeare, because only a Romeo and Juliet opera would make sense of that poodle cameo at that point.

Knox is so fed up with all the passive aggression and the new energy of Fox that he throws him to the gang and locks the bottle warehouse.

Weirdest buddy cop novel ever, but there's a nice rhythm to it.

If we could only get into the head of this brilliant author. This book is filled with tongue-twisters on every page that get more and more difficult as you turn the pages. It's hilariously nonsensical and my husband and Kai love it - the former loves reading the tongue twisters aloud and the latter loves listening to the words spill over each other. I imagine that this will be an excellent book for children or adults that battle with speech impediments like stuttering.

The perfect story for little ones. Revisiting Dr. Seuss’s famous collection these last two days has taken me right back to my own childhood and I have to admit I’ve rather enjoyed re-reading these stories. Dr. Seuss makes reading and poetry fun with tongue twisters along the way.
Reading his books with young children really is a joy especially when you get to watch them immerse themselves in this little fictional world.

Read to Trent 2/27-3/1/15