61. I've Lost My Hippopotamus by Jack Prelutsky

illustrated by Jackie Urbanovich
read the book - from Bosler Library
2012 Greenwillow Books
144 pgs.
Kid's Poetry
Discovered and read on 10/10/17
Goodreads rating:  3.89 - 277 ratings
My rating:4

Some of the poems I liked to follow comments, below

My comments:  I was greatly surprised to see this book pass through circulation at the library....I'm very familiar with other Prelutsky books that "look" the same - A Pizza the Size of the Sun, New Kid on the Block, Something Big Has Been Here. - but this was totally a new one to me.  There were lots of poems that take two words (one being an animal) and combining them:  Pelicantaloupes, Crabacus, Asparagoose, and Wiguanas to name a few, where he goes on his usual silly explanations that no one else can get away with.  And there are six haikus!  CAMEL:  I have one large bump,/ Two long, beautiful lashes,/ And a foul temper.  His vocabulary usage, as usual, is superb, introducing what I am sure are many new words to unsuspecting young'uns.  Lots of fun!

Goodreads synopsis: Some of the animals in this book are real. They include:
the hippopotamus (she's missing)
the elephant (he's artistically talented)
the octopus (it's great at multitasking).
          Others may not be quite so real. These include:
the wiguana (very hairy, for a lizard)
the halibutterfly (there's something fishy about it)
the gludu (quite clingy).
          In the tradition of Jack Prelutsky's classic poetry collections The New Kid on the Block, It's Raining Pigs & Noodles, and A Pizza the Size of the Sun, here is a book packed with more than 100 funny poems and silly pictures. Most of the poems are about animals—some are big and some are small, some have unusual interests, and some are just plain unusual.

A handful of haiku: (!!)

Camel

I have one large hump,

Two long, beautiful lashes,

And a foul temper

Frog

All evening I sing.

Happy on a lily pad,

Celebrating spring.

Mole

Tunnel!  I tunnel!

I never see my tunnels,

Yet they comfort me.

Oyster

I’m clearly no gem,

But in my interior

I’m growing a pearl.

Peacock

I am glorious!

My tail has a thousand eyes

For you to admire.

Zebra

Black white black white black.

I am a striped illustion,

A horse in disguise.

Cupcakes

I’m very fond of cupcakes

And love to eat them up,

But I’ve never found a cupcake

That came inside a cup.

I Played a Game of Golf Today

I played a game of golf today –

I’d never played before.

I wasn’t ery good at it

And won’t play anymore.

I shot a sixty-seven,

Which was surely not my goal.

My score was even higher

When I played the second hole.

I’m Gazing through My Telescope

I’m gazing through my telescope

At something in the skies,

Something I could never see

If I just used my eyes,

Something that’s so far away

I wonder haow the light

Can even reach my telescope

Sop I can see the sight.

Somewhere in the universe,

As distant as can be,

I now extraterrestrials

Are looking back at me.

Of course, I can’t detect them,

And in fact, I have no hope,

If they can see me, the must have

A Better telescope.

A Centipede Was Thirsty

A centipede was thirsty,

But to satisfy its need,

It drank too much for it to hold ---

And so the centipede.

My Pencil Will Not Write

My pencil will not write,

My crayons do not draw,

My lantern cannot light,

My saws refuse to saw.

My toothbrush is too soft,

My football can’t hold air,

My kit won’t stay aloft,

I’ve lost my underwear.

My songbird has no song,

My you-you doesn’t work,

My calendar is wrong,

My clock has gone berserk.

My TV won’t turn on,

My hat falls off my head,

My cat’s meow is gone ---

I’m better off in bed.

My Snake Can Do Arithmetic

My snake can do arithmetic,

My snake is far from dumb,

My snake can take two numbers

And come up with a sum.

She can’t subtract, which makes her sad,

And two things make her sadder . . .

She can’t divide or multiply ---

My snake is just an adder.

Won Ton: A Cat Tale Told in Haiku - Lee Wardlaw

Illustrated by Eugene Yelchin
2011, Henry Holt & Co.
$16.99
32 pages
Rating:  4.5
Endpapers:  Navy & lt. blue/gray cat fur, close up

Very cool story, told entirely in haiku (3 lines, syllables count! 5-7-5) about a huge-eyed Siamese cat who is adopted from an animal shelter and taken home by a young boy.  Count the syllables.

Nice place they got there
Bed. Bowl. Blankie.  Just like home!
or so I've been told.

Yawn.  String-on-a-stick.
Fine.  I'll come out and chase it
to make you happy.

Help!  I've been catnapped,
dressed in frillies, forced to lap
tea with your sister.

Artwork:  fully cover page.  The at is great.  "Graphite and gouache on watercolor paper."  They're nice, very nice.

The Robin Makes a Laughing Sound - Sallie Wolf

Charlesbridge, 2010
$11.95
For: Kids
44 pages
Rating: 4.5
Endpapers: Gray & cream checkerboard with simple bird sketches

Observation journal - an excellent model
Poetry book
Sketching
Watercolors

This journal takes us through a year of observations - of birds, or the changing seasons, and models an observation journal beautifully. It is also a poetry book that includes rhyming poeims, haiku, list poems....

Wolf ends her jounral with a page of thoughts behind journal keeping and a page of bird-watching resources.

Winter Wren
Are you a winter wren?
I see you only once or twice a year ---
a tiny, dark shadow scooting under bushes.
If your tail weren't so perky,
if you weren't so tiny,
I'd think you were on of those
ubiquitous sparrows.

Frustrations
I often hear what I can't see ---
birds and squirrels scolding me.
I scan the branches far and near,
but I don't see what I can hear.

(A haiku)
Early crocuses
burst through dead leaves. Brown creepers
circle up tree trunks.

I love all the pen and ink and watercolor sketches.

Next year I'm going to begin our science studies with observations of the flora and fauna of southern Arizona. Perhspas I'll teach the kids how to sew together an easy journal of blank pages and we can start making observations using this super book as a model.

Yum! MmMm! Que Rico! - Pat Mora

Poetry
America's Sproutings
Illustrated by Rafael Lopez
Lee & Low Books, 2007
$16.95
32 pages
Love the Illustrations.
Love the Interesting paragraph for each haiku.
Not crazy about some of the haiku.
Endpapers: Pumpkin orange

Discover the foods NATIVE to North and South America. There might even be a few surprises! A really informative, interesting, well-researched paragraph about each individual food sits in the left edge of the left page (black font on a rich orange...yellow....green....), a haiku about the same food sits on the right page. Illustrations are gorgeous - bold, bright, no white (the originals are acrylic on wood). Love 'em.

Blueberry --- Chili --- Chocolate --- Corn --- Cranberry --- Papaya --- Peanut --- Pecan --- Pineapple --- Potato --- Prickly Pear --- Pumpkin (look at all the P's!) --- Tomato --- Vanilla

CHOCOLATE

Fudge, cake, pie, cookies.
Brown magic melts on your tongue.
Happy, your eyes dance.

I teach haiku each year. It's great for figuring out syllables, stresses, rhythm. I always encourage the kids to get rid of any non-essential words by putting in a snazzier one. Also encouraged is adding a word to make sure that it paints the picture it needs to paint. We really work on having them make total sense. Some of the haikus in this book leave out words to the point that they don't really paint the picture they need to paint. Others will disagree, I'm sure.
Don't get me wrong - it's a great book. I'm just not crazy about some of the haikus.

Wing Nuts - Paul Janeczko & J. Patrick Lewis

POETRY
Illustrated by: Tricia Tusa
2006
Rating: 3.5 (Illustrations bring my rating down)
$15.99
Endpapers: pink

Senryu is a form of haiku. I looked it up on the internet, it has to do more with "human" nature than with "nature" nature. The haiku/senryu in this book are clever, punny, and funny. Paul Janeczko is a great Maine children's poet, J. Patrick Lewis has always written poetry with great humor for kids. This is their first collaboration. This is the second Tricia Tusa book for me, and again, it'ss not as complimentary to the fun poetry as is could be. Some of the illustrations don't seem to go with the haiku at all. They are so suggestive of particular pictures, but she seems to disregard this. Odd.


High school band minus
its tuba player --- looking
for a substi-toot!

and

Irksome mosquito
kindly sing your evening song
in my brother's ear.

and then

City piugeons chatter
and coo -- busybodies
eavesdropping.

The Haiku Year

Tom Gilroy, Anna Grace, Jim McKay, Douglas A. Martin, Grant Phillips, Michael Slope
2004
157 pgs.
$13.95
Capture the moment in an instant of enlightenment.

Seven friends made an agreement to write a haiku every day for a year. Many are in the original, Japanese format - three lines, 5-7-5 syllable pattern. And many take on the looser "Western style" that Jack Kerouac called "POPS" -- little three lined poems aiming towards a kind of zen enlightenment.

Even "Amanda called"
on a scrap of paper
lightens my day

geese overhead
the radiators'll be
tapping soon

left outside in the rain
even plastic flowers
fade

Talking to himself
he makes me feel at home
in this Starbucks.

Bright sun
through filthy windows
shiny winter gloom

How do I say
goodbye when you're not even
here to hear it

Lonely rainy day
hoping to run into
someone I know

With just my finger
I wrote of our love
in the snow.

I'm not sure what the plant on the cover or its significance is....I didn't purchase this because it was all dirty and scuffed up, so I sat in the cafe at Borders and read it. Then I tried it out. It would take a lot of determination to write every day. And sticking to the regimented 5-7-5 format would take a long, long time if you DID find that impetus to write a haiku a day. I'd love to try it, capturing a moment from my day every day. I really enjoyed the concept AND the poetry!