April is National Poetry Month, and this April has been an especially exciting time to celebrate poetry for children. The "kidlitosphere" (to borrow the popular phrase coined by children's author Melissa Wiley) has been buzzing with energy; a number of blogs and websites are devoted to celebrating poetry with and for children. My six year old daughter and I have had a wonderful time visiting sites each day, reading new poems, and trying our hand at some poetry writing. We've gotten acquainted with a lot of new poets, but we've also gotten to know some old favorites better. One of those is Jack Prelutsky.

Prelutsky was the first-ever U.S. children's poet laureate (named last year) and is considered something of an elder statesman in the world of poetry for kids. His wonderful sense of humor, eye for topics that children love to read about, and playful sense of rhythm and rhyme make his work a delight to read aloud. This week our family has been enjoying the terrific work in his collection A Pizza the Size of the Sun, first published in 1996.

A Pizza the Size of the Sun contains over one hundred funny Pretlutsy poems illustrated with pencil cartoon sketches by James Stevenson. This is the kind of poetry collection that delights groups, classrooms, families...it's poetry meant to be read aloud, giggled over, repeated, and shared. We've read it in our morning school time, at the dinner table with Daddy, and in our homeschool co-op group. When you take a Prelutsky poem with you, it's sure to be a hit...kids will laugh and ask you to 'read that again!' and adults will chuckle over the clever wordplay.

There's no real attempt to organize the poems by topic that I can see. You just dive in and keep swimming through syllables of fun. The title poem kicks things off with an ode to a gigantic pizza, topped with "mountains of cheese...and sausage galore/with every last olive they had at the store." What kid can resist a giant pizza? ("I'd like to eat fourteen pieces" said a five year old boy listening to this one yesterday.) Prelutsky loves to exaggerate; it's hard not to laugh over "a pizza too massive to pick up and toss/a pizza resplendent with oceans of sauce."

Food does feature in several more poems. Sometimes there's a fanciful take on real food -- could you grow a spaghetti tree if someone gave you some "Spaghetti Seeds"? What would happen to the "The Jellybean Brigade" if they marched in the "broiling sun" of a very hot day? And how do you think "An Unsavory Tomato" might feel when "judged substandard/for a salad, soup, or sauce"? (Yes, you're right..."disgruntled, glum, and cross...") Sometimes the food is entirely imaginary like the "cotton candy cottage cheese" and "mashed mosquito marinara mango moose" on the menu at "Gloppe's Soup Shoppe." My daughter isn't too into gross humor, but Prelutsky only indulges it once in a while. 

She's more into his animal poems, which remind me strongly of Ogden Nash's work.  My favorite is "An Unobservant Porcupine"...it "backed up into his brother./Since then they've been inseparable--they're stuck on one another." My daughter loves "A Teenage Hippopotamus" (he's "louder than a train./He loves to blast his radio,/it's driving me insane...")

As you can probably tell, much of the appeal in Prelutsky's work is auditory. It comes through clever rhyme and wordplay. He shows a masterful sense of rhythm in poems like "I Often Repeat Repeat Myself" (which really begs to be read again again!). But some of the poems are visual treats too. A poem about llamas utilizes double "lls" on all of its many words that begin with the letter "l". "A Triangular Tale" and "I Was Walking in a Circle" are shape poems, while "I Am Your Mirror Image" has to be held up to a mirror to be read at all.

These are humorous poems meant to tickle funny bones and get kids playing with language. I really like that even kids who might find poetry "boring" or strange would likely find at least a handful of poems in this collection that get them laughing. Poetry like this is not precisely highbrow, but it's work that gives children a chance to relish language and relax as they listen to it and perhaps learn to use it in new ways.  Prelutsky has completely mastered the craft of this particular genre -- the poems give you a sense of someone relaxed and completely at home with wordplay and a childlike imagination.

James Stevenson's funny black and white pictures add just the right touch to many of the pages. You may not think you're familiar with his work but you might be since he's penned cartoons for The New Yorker. The style is simple, loose and sketchy, just right for the mostly brief but punchy poems.

Children 6 and up will likely be the most receptive audience for these poems. Younger siblings listening in will enjoy the sounds, I'm sure, but there's enough hefty vocabulary and "punny" double-meaning moments of humor that they'll be more appreciated by elementary age children.

Our family has gone for repeated helpings of A Pizza the Size of the Sun. It's full of delicious humor and rhyme!

~befus, 2009

A Pizza the Size of the Sun
by Jack Prelutsky, illustrated by James Stevenson
ISBN  0688132367 (library binding)
Greenwillow Books, 1996

Recommended: Yes