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Happy Birthday, Dr. Seuss!

*Picture book for preschoolers through second graders, fantasy
*Young boy as main character
*Rating: Dr. Seuss is at his best in If I Ran the Zoo–from made-up creatures to fantastical places to those ever-clever rhymes.

Short, short summary: Gerald McGrew says that his local zoo is a “pretty good zoo.” But it just has the normal, old animals that all zoos have. So, if Gerald ran it. . .he would do things a little differently. For example, he would travel up past the North Pole in his Skeegle-mobile and bring back a family of “What-do-you-know!” He would hunt in the mountains of Zomba-ma-Tant and even brave the blistering sands of the Desert of Zind. People from all over, of course, will want to see these amazing animals at the McGrew Zoo. And as he points out at the end, Gerald would just make a few changes to the zoo. (BTW, did you know that Dr. Seuss’s father actually ran a zoo in Springfield, Massachusetts for thirty years? Write what you know, everyone. )

So, what do I do with this book?

1. If I Ran the Zoo is full of Dr. Seuss’s wonderful illustrations. You can do two activities with illustrations. You can read the descriptions of a creature to your students and ask them to draw what they imagine. You can also ask them to create an animal for McGrew’s Zoo, name it, and even write a description–depending on their age and ability levels.

2. Students can write their own versions of If I Ran the Zoo by writing about what they would do with a zoo, or they can also change the place: If I Ran the School or If I Ran a Pizza Parlor. If you have young students, you can do this as a shared writing activity with the repeating sentence: “If I ran the zoo, I would have a ____________________.” If you have older students, they can create their stories themselves.

3. Some of the places such as the North Pole, Africa, and North Dakota are real (of course). Other places, it is clear that Dr. Seuss made them up. Ask your students to give you a thumbs-up if the place you are reading about is a real place (with made-up creatures) or a made-up place. You can also make a list of both on chart paper in a T-table. This can also lead to a discussion of what makes If I Ran the Zoo a fantasy even though parts of it are real.

Theodor Seuss Geisel - Dr. Seuss was born March 2, 1904, and in honor of that historic occasion numerous events have occurred and continue this week across the country. The good doctor's 104 birthday has been celebrated with readings, parties, classroom activities, art exhibits, and the upcoming release of the latest Seuss movie, Horton Hears A Who!

The Read Across America events (March 3) used Dr. Seuss as the focus point. Here in Denver, everyone from firefighters to local authors to politicians to moms from the neighborhood read to kids from the forty-four books written and illustrated by Seuss. I had the pleasure of trying to do justice to Green Eggs and Ham (voted by the kids as the book they wanted me to read) to a classy group of first graders at Fairmont Dual Immersion Academy in the historic Baker Neighborhood. They knew the book by heart, of course, and certainly appeared delighted with the book's fast-moving tale of Sam-I-Am's persistent efforts to introduce his friend to new experiences and adventures, and the friend's reluctance to think outside the box.

Meanwhile, Librería Martínez invites everyone to a special story time performance by students of the Santa Ana High School Drama Department in celebration of Dr. Seuss's Birthday this Saturday, March 8th @ 1:00 PM. This famous bookstore is located at 1110 N. Main Street, Santa Ana, CA. 714-973-7900 for more information.



One of my all-time favorite books, a book that I still read periodically, is If I Ran The Zoo. It's a book I remember reading very early in life and it stayed with me. I memorized several passages from it's pages, back when I used to do such things, and I always thought that young Gerald McGrew was the kind of kid I'd like to meet one day.

If I Ran The Zoo is a classic study of the power of imagination. The reality presented in this book is compelling, as any child's perspective must be, but it also challenges the reader to just sit back and soak it in; for adult readers that's called suspension of disbelief; I think kids simply say it's a good book.

Young Gerald McGrew, the hero of If I Ran The Zoo, suggests that the regular old zoo, although "pretty good," could use "something new."

"But if I ran the zoo,"
Said young Gerald McGrew,
"I'd make a few changes.
"That's just what I'd do. . ."

Who hasn't entertained such thoughts on any gray day when everything is too ordinary and boring? And what changes! No "old-fashioned" lions and tigers. In fact, Gerald would open the cages and let the animals go. Then the fun begins. From one strange land to another: Zomba-ma-Tant and Motta-fa-Potta-fa-Pell and the Far Western part of south-east North Dakota. From one very unique animal to quite another freaky beast: Joats, and Iotas, and the scraggle-foot Mulligatawny; Gussets, Gherkins, a Gasket and a Gootch. And, when required, elaborate contraptions to rein in the animals: the Cooker-mobile; the Bad-Animal-Catching-Machine ("rather expensive to build such a kit, but with it a hunter can never get bit"); and, of course, the Skeegle-mobile. As Gerald says, "If you want to catch beasts you don't see every day, you have to go places quite out-of-the-way."

It seems obvious, to me at least, that young Gerald McGrew exemplifies the writing spirit perfectly. Those of us who aspire to entertain readers with our written words often stare at old-fashioned reality and decide that it could use something new. Then, we go out and find it and bring it back for the readers who are willing to pay the admission charge and take a tour of our zoo. We introduce every strange animal we can capture, from the exotic lands that inhabit our minds, those places quite out-of-the-way, and we use extraordinary measures to bring back the catch: novels and poetry and short stories and essays and bedtime tales and scripts and blog scribbling. And then the payoff.

"WOW!" They'll all cheer,
"What this zoo must be worth!
It's the gol-darndest zoo
On the face of the earth!"

Thank you, Dr. Seuss.

Later.

Today, I'm doing something I rarely do — posting an original poem. Even though I write quite a lot of poems, I don't usually share here because I remain hopeful that someday, I'll be able to sell them. Even though that remains an extremely remote possibility. Which means that the only ones I'd be willing to part with for free are the ones that are less than wonderful, if you catch my drift.

This is one of those poems. It represents hours of writing and revision time, but if I've done my job properly in crafting it, you shouldn't notice that. You may, in fact, think it "slight." Poetry is like that — the cost of making it nearly always exceeds its value in the marketplace. But I digress. First, the poem; then, a discussion of its form.

Inside the Library
by Kelly R. Fineman

Jackety Stackety
Inside the Library,
Books of all genres are
Found on the shelves

History, Mystery,
Autobiography,
Journals of science and
stories of elves.


Musicians out there, including , and more, will immediately work out that this sort of poem is in 6/8 time, and is primarily counted in six (one two three four five six) with strong beats allowing it to be "conducted" in two (since the emphasis is on beats one and four, and the poem is not counted one-and-two-and-three-and). Anyone confused by this particular bit of information need not worry, all will be explained below.

My poem, "Inside the Library", is a form of poem called a double dactyl. This poem is sometimes called a "higgledy piggledy", because it involves nonsense words at the start. But let's not rush ahead.


What is a dactyl?
A dactyl is a type of poetic foot. Nearly everyone who's read Shakespeare is familiar with another sort of foot called the iamb, which has an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed one: ta-TUM. A dactyl is a three-syllable foot composed of a stressed syllable followed by two unstressed ones, or, as Stephen Fry has it in his wonderful book, The Ode Less Travelled: TUM-titty.


What is a double dactyl?
A double dactyl is a single word made up of two dactyls. It's a six-syllable word in which the first and fourth syllables are stressed. TUM-titty-TUM-titty. Examples: microbiology, gubernatorial, antiestablishment, valedictorian, marketability, extracurricular, etc. Or, in my poem, "autobiography."


What are the rules for the double dactyl form?

1. It opens with gibberish (almost always).
2. The second line of the poem contains the subject of the poem, often a person, but not always.
3. It is composed of two four-line stanzas.
4. The last line of each stanza is made up of a single dactyl followed by a one-syllable word; the rest of the lines have two dactyls each.
5. The single words ending the stanzas must rhyme (e.g., "shelves, elves").
6. It must contain one single-word double dactyl in the second stanza, usually in the 6th or 7th line of the poem.


Any suggestions on how to go about writing one?
Why, I'm glad I asked myself that question. I'm full of suggestions, as this post from 2005 will attest. Only pretty much nobody was reading my blog back then, so if you haven't read it before, I quite understand.

First: Choose your topic, at least in general. For the above poem, I was trying to come up with a poem about books to submit for consideration for a particular anthology. Neither this nor any of the other poems I came up with (different forms and free verse) made it, but that's okay; the fun was in the writing, after all. I started to think about writing a poem to describe what sort of books I might find inside the library. (INside the LIbrary is dactylic, you see, so I opted for this form.)

Second: Brainstorm to figure out possible single-word double dactyls to use in the second stanza. This initially sounds daunting, but trust me, once you get started (playing that TUM-titty-TUM-titty beat in your head), you'll start to come up with some. I decided on autobiography because it's a category of books. Before that point, I'd started writing about different genres of fiction, which I wasn't liking quite as well and for which, moreover, I was unable to arrive at a single-word double dactyl.

Third: Pick your nonsense words. "Higgledy piggledy" are always up for grabs. Other popular ones include "Hey nonny, hey/ho nonny" and "Higgamus Piggamus". For my part, I try to find something a wee bit related to my topic; hence, "Jackety stackety". (Books have jackets, libraries have stacks.)

So, here's the one I free-wrote during that 2005 post on how to write them, interspersed with the writing rules:

Nonsense: Clangety, clattery
Subject: where is my frying pan
Description: I need the one with the
handle that's broke

Start of stanza 2: None of the others are
one-word dd: Super-reliable
They will all ruin my
rhyme w/line 4: fried artichoke.

You can see how that one won't win any prizes, and I toyed with redoing it because the incorrect grammar of "handle that's broke" was really bugging me, but I think it remains a useful demonstration of how the form works. And it's minorly amusing.

Which brings me to my final point: double dactyls are almost always humorous. If you Google "higgledy piggledy", you'll find some excellent ones (and some that are so bawdy as to be blushworthy). Do look for "History Lesson" by Allan Wolf and "Historical Reflections" by John Hollander, both of which can also be found in one of my favorite reference books for form poetry, A Kick in the Head: An Everyday Guide to Poetic Forms edited by Paul Janeczko and illustrated by Chris Raschka. Also have a look at Theodore S. Drachman's "Small Problem", a slightly bawdy poem about Dutch scientist Antonie van Leeuwenhoek, known as the Father of Microbiology. (In addition to being terribly funny, it uses two separate instances of single-word double dactyls, one in each stanza.)

Pemberthy, the singing, blogging bear has written another poem. This time he's been quite adventurous and written a triolet. This is a French poetic form with eight lines, and the challenge of repeating lines, but Pemberthy likes challenges. You can read his new composition here.