Runny Babbit
Written
by Shel Silverstein
Illustrated
by Shel Silverstein
Harper
Collins, 2005
83
pages
Poetry
My Children’s Lit professor let us listen to the poem, “Sea
Poup” from Runny Babbit and I was
hooked. I trotted straight to the
library as soon as class was over and checked it out. This book is a collection of poems Shel
Silverstein was writing but had not yet published upon his death in 1999. His family decided the world needed this collection
of poems that changed the first letter on the first two words to form funny off-beat
words to showcase what an interesting person Mr. Silverstein was. All the poems center around animals and the
way they see things. If you want to
laugh like a kid again, grab this book, and laugh out loud. I did.
The cartoon illustrations are done in ink. The illustrations spread across both pages
with the text on one or both pages. The
text appears to be hand writing and gives the book a personal feel, like a
journal. There is no color used in the
book - only black and white. To me this
gives the book an eclectic look that’s also easy for children to read.
Preschool through sixth grade readers will enjoy this
book. The collection of poems is sunny,
and younger children will like the funny words and the funny things the animals
do. This book will be good for a social
studies lesson as the poems teach tolerance.
For a language arts lesson, the children can write a poem changing the
first letter of the first two words. Of
course, a poetry lesson would work well to explain sound, meaning, and meter as
the funny words sound similar to regular words, but mean something entirely
different. Runny Babbit won the Lion and Unicorn Poetry award in 2006 and the
Quill award in 2005 for the children’s illustrated book.
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