The word “hot dog” is a is an interesting one with several different meanings. Most commonly, it is another word for a frankfurter or wiener. Frankfurter, by the way, means “from Frankfurt.” Frankfurt is a city in Germany. Similarly, wiener means “from Vienna.” Vienna is a city in Austria. So, the words frankfurter and wiener... Read more »

I love a good joke and I love a good limerick. This poem isn’t quite a limerick because the first line doesn’t rhyme with the second and fifth lines, but it’s close; it has the same rhythm and length, and almost the same rhyme scheme. So, it’s almost a limerick. And it’s also a pretty good... Read more »

When I was in elementary school, I spent a lot of time learning to make silly faces and strange voices. I taught myself how to wiggle my ears, raise one eyebrow at a time, and pucker my lips like a fish. I learned how to talk like Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse and Dracula. I... Read more »

List poems can be so much fun to write. All you need is a beginning and an end, and then you can make a list in the middle as long or as short as you like. Shel Silverstein’s poem “Sick” and Jack Prelustky’s “Bleezer’s Ice Cream” are a couple of classic examples of list poems.... Read more »

I recently added a lesson to poetry4kids showing different ways write a poem using repetition. You can repeat entire stanzas, creating a chorus or refrain in the poem. You can repeat lines, as Robert Frost famously did at the end of “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,” or as Dylan Thomas did in “Do... Read more »

Some people love puns, while others hate them with a passion. People who don’t like puns often call them “groaners” because they groan when they hear them. Personally, I love a good pun. My friend, the poet Jack Pretlutsky once told me he thinks a good pun is one that you can be equally proud... Read more »

This poem has a rather interesting history. After publishing my first book, The Aliens Have Landed at Our School!, my editor asked if I could write an entire collection of funny poems about school. I assured him that I could and set to work creating a new book. When I was done writing it, he... Read more »

I often feel that summer is the best of all seasons, especially when you’re in school for the rest of the year. In the summertime, you don’t usually have to go to school. Instead you can swim, play in the park, or even just stay home and play games instead of doing homework. I have... Read more »

From my book Revenge of the Lunch Ladies, this is either a story of a science experiment gone very, very wrong, or it is an elaborate excuse for not turning in your homework. Or possibly both. It is also a long way to go for a groaner of an ending, but I had so much... Read more »

About 150 years ago, an English children’s writer named William Brighty Rands wrote a poem called “Godfrey Gordon Gustavus Gore” about a boy who refused to ever shut the door and never listened to his parents until they built a sailboat and threatened to send him off to Singapore. In the early 1900s, another English... Read more »