Down the Back of the Chair

New Zealand's children's author Magarret Mahy has been compared to the award winning poet Shel Silverstein. The poem begins with the narrator's father loosing the car keys and by doing so this causes the family to get even more poorer because dad can't go to work without the keys. But then little Mary tells her Dad that when she loses something she searches down the back of the chair. Each time they go down the back of the chair they find a wild assortment of objects that resolve their financial problems.

Illustrations by Polly Dunbar are water color and cut paper that add a breeziness that suits the rhythmic flow of the poem.