Poetry Friday: Be Glad Your Nose Is On Your Face And Other Poems

Be Glad Your Nose Is On Your Face And Other Poems. By Jack Prelutsky. Illustrated by Brandon Dorman. 2008. HarperCollins. 208 pages. [POETRY]

Be Glad Your Nose Is On Your Face is a collection of poetry by the oh-so-prolific-and-often-humorous Jack Prelutsky. It does feature some new poetry--fifteen poems to be exact--but consider it to be a best-of collection featuring his previously published poems.

The book has five sections: "It's Hard To Be An Elephant," "Oh Breakfast, Lovely Breakfast," "Once they All Believed In Dragons," "Is Traffic Jam Delectable?", and "There Was A Little Poet." Each section has a handful of activities for children to extend the poetry.

Do I have a favorite? Or two? Well, I'm a bit partial to "My Mother Made A Meat Loaf"

Here it is in part...

My mother made a meat loaf
that provided much distress,
she tried her best to serve it,
but she met with no success,
her sharpest knife was powerless
to cut a single slice,
and her efforts with a cleaver
failed completely to suffice. (48)

But I think my favorite, favorite (and maybe you can guess why) is "I Often Repeat Repeat Myself."

I often repeat repeat myself,
I often repeat repeat.
I don't I don't know why know why,
I simply know that I I I
am am inclined to say to say
a lot a lot this way this way --
I often repeat repeat myself,
I often repeat repeat. (136)

Of course, that is only part of the poem. You'll have to check out this book or The Pizza the Size of the Sun to catch it in its entirety. There is just something about that poem that just works for me. It is very fun, very catchy, and very memorable. I think it is the rhythm. I'm not an expert. I just know what I like. And I like this one very much.

Included with the book is a CD. I was skeptical at first, was this CD just a gimmick? But I was surprised to see the CD is over an hour long! Perhaps some of these poems-as-songs will show readers (of all ages) that poetry can be fun. Especially songs like "We're Fearless Flying Hot Dogs." Though the performance on the CD is nothing like the performance I've linked too. It's not-so-interrupted.

© Becky Laney of Becky's Book Reviews