Review Blog

Mar 06 2009

My dog may be a genius by Jack Prelutsky

Greenwillow Books, 2008. ISBN 97006623862 3
(Ages 6-8) With over 50 books of poetry published, and the first Children's Poet Laureate in the USA, Jack Prelutsky has a deserved reputation for his poems containing a lot of different word play. From the 4 line simple play upon word sounds such as I thought I saw, where he uses the letters, B, C, I and Y to make a rhyme, to the more complex poems containing 32 lines of rhyming poetry about something silly like, I often mow the bathtub, each poem is different and engagingly silly, and sure to please lower primary students.
Not only will they amuse and attract younger readers, especially when read aloud, they will form a basis for poems to be created in the classroom, using some of this poems as a template for their own work. I am climbing up a ladder, for example, has words going from the cautious to the nervous to the plain scared the higher the climber goes. I can imagine this being used as a template for other poems about something a child may be doing. But whatever is done with the poems, or however they are read in the classroom or at the library, they are all fun, and the illustrations only increase the enjoyment that smaller children will gain from this book.
Fran Knight