While walking on a hillside, an unusual line occurred to Lewis Carroll: “For the Snark was a Boojum, you see.” Carroll later incorporated the phrase into a complete work that became the best-known nonsense poem of all time: “The Hunting of the Snark.”
What could be more of a delight to young readers? Here in one book is Carroll’s famed poem with its original illustrations by Henry Holliday, side by side with Martin Gardner’s “Snarkteasers” – delightfully puzzling questions like these:
– Can you rearrange the letters of OCEAN to spell something in which one can
spend days in the ocean? But if the ocean is frisky, it’s risky.
– Seven is certainly an odd number of coats to be wearing. Can you make the
number even by crossing out one letter?
– See if you can change one letter of SNAIL to make a word that describes a
sound made by certain wild animals. Next, try changing the first
two letters of SHARK to one letter and make a four-letter word
that describes a sound made by a certain tame animal.
Young Snark-hunters have been sailing along with that extraordinary sea-going crew in search of a Snark since the poem was first published a century ago. And Martin Gardner’s Snarkteasers are sure to make their fantastic voyage more enchanting than ever before. A delightful dividend for Snark fans is the text of another famous Carroll poem, “Jabberwocky,” complete with Sir John Tenniel’s famous drawings.