Subject Area: Language Arts

Book Summary
Award-winning, best-selling, giggle-inducing author Jack Prelutsky is back with another collection of hilarious poems. From the title poem to "Burp" and "I'm Glad I'm Not a Firefly," readers will be charmed and entranced by his creativity.

Objective
Readers, even reluctant ones, will love this compendium of humorous poems. They'll enjoy poetry, perhaps as never before, and wordplay.
Standard: Students will write a response to literature.

Before Reading
Expect the Unexpected
Prelutsky's poems are often funny because they are irreverent and unexpected. It's Raining Pigs & Noodles is humorous because we expect to hear the idiom "raining cats and dogs." The author often takes tired expressions and turns them on their ears.

• Foster budding humorists by asking them to create new idioms.
• Hold a class discussion about idioms - expressions that are not interpreted strictly according to their meaning. For instance, "cute as a button," "straight from the horse's mouth," etc.
• Ask students to choose a favorite idiom and turn it on its ear-changing one part of the expression to conjure up a new image.
• Have each student illustrate his or her newly coined idiom and share them with the class.

Teaching Plan
Activities
Poems Are Our Friends
Many students, and adults, too, are frightened by the idea of poetry. Encourage creativity and allow your class to come up their own masterpieces.

• Talk about the poetry in the book - some poems are long, others are short, but they all follow an individual rhythm and rhyme scheme.
• Ask students to think of a funny incident, situation, or even joke from their lives.
• Have students write their funny moment in rhyme. Stress that poems do not need to be a certain length; they must simply capture the moment.
• Invite students to share their poems with the class.

My Own Version
Part of the charm of Prelutsky's poetry is that the joke is set up almost from the beginning; the titles are themselves often funny or eye-catching.

• Ask each student to select his or her favorite poem title (you may wish to use the book's index for this purpose).
• Once each student has selected a title, ask him or her to (re)write the poem from his or her own point of view.
• The new poems should be humorous, but not resemble the original too closely.
• Post the revised poems, along with a copy of the original, on a classroom bulletin board.

Other Humorous Poetry Books Your Class May Enjoy
Something Big Has Been Here
By Jack Prelutsky
More wacky observations from the master.

Where the Sidewalk Ends
By Shel Silverstein
This classic will have young (and old) readers in stitches!

Laugh-eteria
By Douglas Florian
A humorous offering from a younger poet who's giving Prelutsky and Silverstein a run for their money!

Other Books by Jack Prelutsky
Something Big Has Been Here
A Pizza the Size of the Sun
The New Kid on the Block

Teaching Plan written by Rebecca Gómez.