Animal Poetry, by Lisa Von Drasek

Try a comparison of critter-themed poems with your young bards this month.

When thinking of poetry for children, verses about animals immediately come to mind. One of my favorites, by Rosalie Moore, is from a collection of 42 cat poems edited by Nancy Larrick called Cats are Cats (Philomel, 1988).

Catalogue

Cats sleep fat and walk thin.
Cats, when they sleep, slump;
When they walk, pull in –
And where the plump's been,
there's skin.
Cats walk thin.
Cats wait in a lump. Jump in a streak
. Cats, when they jump, are sleek
As a grape slipping its skin –
They have technique.
Oh, cats don't creak. They sneak.
Cats sleep fat.
They spread comfort beneath them
Like a good mat,
As if they picked the place
And then sat.
You walk around one
As if he were the City Hall after that.

As our kids would say, we have to give equal time for dogs. Dog lovers will relish Once I Ate a Pie by Patricia MacLachlan and Emily MacLachlan Charest, illustrated with personable oil painting portraits by Katy Schneider (Joanna Cotler, 2006). Named an ALA Notable Children's Book 2007, this collection of 13 poems gives individual voice to 13 dogs including Mr. Beefy, a self-satisfied pug, a mixed-breed rescue named Lucy and twin westies, Tillie and Maude, with very different personalities. We delight in reading these poems aloud and students beg to hear them again and again.

Porcupine portraits – clockwise from top left are illustrations from Animal Poems (Steve Jenkins), Eric Carle's Animals Animals (Eric Carle) and Omnibeasts (Douglas Florian).

For intertextual connections, pair this volume with Kristine O'Connell George's Little Dog Poems (Clarion, 1999), and Little Dog and Duncan (Clarion, 2002). Children will recognize the canine behaviors and notice how we can relate to how Little Dog feels in many situations.

Subject study
We like to compare different poets' observations of the same subject. A new addition to Valerie Worth's body of work arrived the other day. The posthumously published Animal Poems (Farrar Straus & Giroux, 2007) is a compendium of poems describing, reflecting and observing animals as varied as a snake, bat, kangaroo and camel. The featured creatures are united by her succinct descriptive language as well as by Steve Jenkins' stunning collage representations.

I like to match the poems in this volume with other authors' work depicting the same animal. I begin with the following, from Animal Poems:

Porcupine

Held fast
In the thicket
Of its own
Thorns, the
Porcupine's
Timid body
Blooms safe
And alone,
Unruffled,
Unharmed.

In his book Omnibeasts (Harcourt, 2004), Douglas Florian's porcupine is placed on the page as a concrete poem with the words arrayed like spines:

The Porcupine

The porcupine
Can climb up pine.
On bark and leaves.
It loves to dine.
The porcupine
has porcupins
That sprout out from
Its porkuskin,
And if you touch one,
You'll complain;
The porcupine's
A porcupain.

I then add to the mix Karla Kuskin's poem from Eric Carle's Animals Animals, collected by Laura Whipple (Putnam Juvenile, reprint edition, 1999):

The Porcupine

A porcupine looks somewhat silly.
He also is extremely quilly.
And if he shoots a quill at you,
Run fast
Or you'll be quilly too.
I would not want a porcupine
To be my loving valentine.

After reading aloud the poems, we talk about what we know about porcupines. I may present some facts from a book with a simple text like Prickly Porcupines by Shannon Zemlicka (Lerner, 2002) or read aloud an entry from an encyclopedia. Hands shoot up from the crowd when they hear that, "No porcupine can throw its quills, but they detach easily and will remain embedded in an attacker."

Delving deeper
Thus begins the fierce discussion of poetic license. Sometimes we decide it's okay to make up words like "quilly" and "porcupins." We write some made-up animal adjectives that we might use in a poem. Most of the time, the children say the poet should have their facts right even if they are writing a silly poem. We examine the poetic forms. Do the words rhyme? Does the author use alliteration?

We pore over the illustrations. In comparison to the photographs of porcupines, which artist most accurately portrays this mammal? Is it important to be precise? Two of the artists work in collage. What about these pictures do you like or dislike? Do the pictures reflect the style of the poems? Florian's poem is humorous; does his illustration mirror that?

Try comparing Worth's "Hummingbird" from Animal Poems with Kristine O' Connell George's depiction in Hummingbird Nest: A Journal of Poems (Harcourt, 2004) or Worth's "Penguin" with Judy Sierra's penguins in Antarctic Antics (Gulliver Books, 1998) and with Lucy W. Rhu's "Enigma Sartorial" (Eric Carle's Animals Animals), which begins, "Consider the Penguin. He's smart as can be/Dressed in his dinner clothes/Permanently..."

Lisa Von Drasek is Children's Librarian at the Bank Street College of Education in New York, NY.