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Browsing the blog archives for May, 2009.
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Poetry: Jack Prelutsky’s The Dragons are Singing Tonight

May 30, 2009
Babies/Toddlers, Picture Books, Poetry, The Arts

dragon

Jack Prelutsky’s The Dragons are Singing Tonight (illustrated by Peter Sís and published by Greenwillow, 1993) is a poetry books about dragon–pet dragons, lazy dragons, mechanical dragons, disconsolate dragons, baby dragons–dragons of all shapes and sizes.  My sister read this book often to her five boys when they were little and they love it to this day.

Using wonderful rythms and imagery, The Dragons are Singing Tonight tells the secrets of a dragon’s life.  What should you do if your dragon gets sick?  The poem My Dragon Wasn’t Feeling Good has the answer:

I took him to a doctor
Just as quickly as I could,
A specialist in dragons,
And she’s in our neighborhood.
She took his pulse and temperature,
Then fed him turpentine
And phosphorus and gasoline–
My dragon’s doing fine.

These poems celebrate the days of yore when knights, dragons, and fair maidens roamed the land, and life was full of mystery and magic.  In “cacophonous chorus” the dragons awake:

They sing of the days of their glory,
They sing of their exploits of old,
Of maidens and knights, and of fiery fights.
And guarding vast caches of gold.

Jack Prelutsky is a well known and beloved children’s poet, and according to the jacket flap of The Dragons are Singing Tonight, he’s also one of the most frequently anthologized poets writing today.  His poetic language–and his dragons-are enchanting.

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Classics: The Owl and the Pussy-cat (In Honor of Marian)

May 5, 2009
Babies/Toddlers, Classics, Picture Books

owl-pic1(This post is in honor of my mother Marian, one of the wisest–and kindest–women I have ever known.)

The Owl and the Pussy-cat is a famous nonsense poem written by the English poet, author, and illustrator Edward Lear.  A contemporary of Lewis Carroll, Lear first published the poem in 1871, and it has been illustrated and re-illustrated ever since.  The edition to the left was illustrated by Paul Galdone (Clarion, 1987).   Jan Brett also illustrated a Caribbean-style version in 1989 (Philomel).

The Owl and the Pussy-cat  is charming and silly, lilting and eminently memorizable.  When I was a girl, my mother recited this poem and had us children memorize it (the other great nonsense poem we learned being “The Purple Cow” by Gelett Burgess).  I believe all of my six siblings can still recite ”The Owl and the Pussycat” to this day (and shame on them if they can’t). 

After the owl and the pussy-cat sailed away in “a beautiful pea-green boat,” Owl serenaded his lovely Puss by the light of the stars.  Being a liberated female,

Pussy said to the Owl
“You elegant fowl!
How charmingly sweet you sing!
O let us be married!
too long we have tarried:
But what shall we do for a ring?”

Not to worry.   After “sail[ing] away for a year and a day,” the couple finds an enterprising Piggy who is delighted to sell them his nose ring.  They are married the very next day by a turkey and celebrate with a magnificent feast using runcible spoons (a term coined by Lear and now in the dictionary).  They end the perfect wedding with dancing on the beach “by the light of the moon, the moon, the moon.”

Really, could there be anything more romantic?

So here’s to my mother, Marian.  Intelligent, compassionate, wise, and abundantly unselfish.   How we miss her.

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