Further insight into the creative mind of Chris White through the wonderfully warped world of Wang Foo and other strange creatures.

About this book...

Chris White, author and illustrator extraordinaire, has come up with a “shrew-d” idea for this, his second collection of zany poems. Following on from the success of his first collection, Bitey the Veggie Vampire, this new volume brings a whole clutch of crazy characters. From a rodent martial arts expert, we move swiftly on to a worm who surfs the internet, a centipede bank robber and an ant-eater called Wayne. Grandpa Hare contributes a moving tribute to all the greyhounds who have ever chased him, and Bitey himself, being a vampire of course, makes a comeback in these pages after carelessly dying in the first book.

As usual, with Chris, the poems have hidden depths. If you like your poetry wild, zany and yucky, you’ll certainly find plenty of stuff to laugh at inside these covers. But, in poems such as "Elvis the Ugly Baby" and "The Little Blue Lion", Chris delves into difficult ideas about what is and isn’t “normal”, and how individuality counts. And, of course, being Chris, he manages to make it funny as well.

We could fill up this panel with quotations and testimonials from the kids at the countless schools and festivals where Chris has performed his poetry and organised writing and drawing workshops, usually verging on fun-packed near hysteria for the kids, but, if we included them all, we’d need a jacket twice as big.

Humour is often in pretty short supply these days, but there’s a good healthy dose inside this book that will keep you going for a long while. Just one word of warning though... watch out for those pideys!

Wang Foo the Kung Foo Shrew
And Other Freaky Poems Too
An Introduction by Chris White, Potty Poet

Today’s word is ‘encouragement’. After Bitey the Veggie Vampire was published in 2000 I was amazed - it was a book that was never meant to be a book. Four years on and I’m still amazed! People saying how much they enjoy Bitey has encouraged me beyond belief and the question “When’s the next one?” really gets the juices flowing!

So here is a book that is meant to be a book and you really only have yourselves to blame. If you hadn’t egged me on, none of this would have happened: no resurrection of Bitey, no birth of Elvis and no arrival of Wang Foo!

Encouragement is a wonderful thing. So, here we go: seconds out, round two! Just watch out for those pideys!