Back in 1994-1995, I took a year’s leave of absence from my teaching job when I was invited to travel to the People’s Republic of China with an educational delegation. I was in China for just a couple of weeks. That was a year when we were also doing major renovations on our house—so I really needed to be around much of the time. Once the contractor and his workers were finished, I had a lot of free time. I decided to spend it writing children’s poetry.
Every school year, I used to do an extensive unit on folklore in my classroom. Some years, my students even wrote fairy tale poems. Their fairy tale poems inspired me to write my own collection, Excerpts from the Fairy Tale Files, while I was at home on leave. Here’s one of the fairy tale poems that I wrote in the form of a Question & Answer:
Q: Who tricked Little Red Riding Hood?
A: The wolf who waited in the wood.
He coaxed sweet Red to pick wildflowers,
Then sneaked away and GULP! devoured
Dear old Granny, jumped in bed
With Granny’s bonnet on his head.
The wolf, alas, was not yet through.
When Red arrived, he ate her, too!
His belly full, his eyelids closed.
He licked his chops and, snoring, dozed.
Anon, a whistling huntsman passed.
He heard loud snoring, was aghast
To find the wolf in deep repose,
All gussied up in Granny’s clothes.
The huntsman raised his knife and cut
A deep slit in the culprit’s gut.
Then out crawled Granny, Little Red.
All three pronounced the sly wolf dead.
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At Blue Rose Girls, I have a poem by Trish Crapo titled Back Then--a poem about childhood and innocence.
At Political Verses, I have a new poem: Who Dat Hangin' at da Laundromat?
Mary Ann has the Poetry Friday Roundup at Great Kids Books.
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