Just read Shel Silverstein’s Where the Sidewalk Ends with my five-year-old daughter. Somehow I’d never read his poems before, not as a kid or adult. What a delight.
Look forward to reading more with my kids (though I did skip a poem now and then). I’m a few decades late to the party, but glad to arrive.
When we finished, my daughter and I decided to write a poem in tribute to, in gratitude for, in attempt to be in the tradition of, Silverstein:
The Itchy Scratchy Girl
There was a girl with an itch on her nose,
so she scratched her toes.
The same girl had an itch on her thigh,
so she scratched her eye.
It was a little confusing,
this itching and scratching.
We couldn’t tell if she was missing or catching,
this itch moving all the time.
She started to scratch her tongue
and said, “I’ve got an itch down in my lung.”
She kept reaching to find her itch,
but instead kept finding a rhyme.
Then said she,
“My whole body does itch!”
Ran straight to me,
and started to scratch.
Shel Silverstein‘s Where the Sidewalk Ends on Amazon here.
“The Itchy Scratchy Girl” © Simone & Kent Annan
