Module 9- August 1-7 Behold the Bold Umbrellaphant by Jack Prelutsky

 

            Behold the Bold Umbrellaphant and other poems

by Jack Prelutsky

Summary:
Take a bunch of words and scramble them up. Give them definitions with a humorous twist and you've got Behold the Bold Umbrellaphant and Other Poems. This book has lots of fun poems about quirky combinations of animals with musical instruments, rain gear, nature and other objects will tie those tongues and make your child laugh. Have fun and be silly with your kids as you read the poems or let your students take a stab at reading the poems themselves. The creative drawings are humorous on their own.


Read it Again?
Yes, this a great book to read.  It is fun to look at all of the illustrations and figure out how they came up with such crazy combinations.  The words are quirky and fun and the illustrations add detail to the poems.  You could sit and read this book over and over again all day.

Library Use:
This would be a fun book to have students read out loud while other students act out the poem out. The students would have making their own photo collages of the poems in the book or creating their own paper collages of poems they create on their own.  It is a great book to get students involved and interested in poetry.

Reviews:

Horn Book (November/December, 2006)

Berger's sophisticated visual wit pairs with Prelutsky's verbal ingenuity to create unconventional animals-the Ocelock, the Clocktopus, and the Tubaboons, to name a few. In each of the seventeen poems, Prelutsky combines an animal with an inanimate object and then evokes the purpose of the object in the animal's behavior. An elephant extends into an Umbrellaphant, which is always in the shade and stays dry; a hornet becomes a shoehornet, a useful but dangerous tool; and "the Pop-Up Toadsters hop and hop, / Then startlingly, abruptly stop / And place in slots atop their heads / Fresh slices of assorted breads." The style of Prelutsky's verse here is reminiscent of his poems for preschoolers in Ride a Purple Pelican, with effective use of repetition, but Berger's art marks this as clearly for elementary-age children. The clever collage art uses reproductions of old-fashioned illustrations of objects-e.g., the Toadsters are vintage toasters with eyes and toad legs, the Alarmadillos' bodies are round analog clocks with bells, and the Panthermometer's tail is a glass mercury thermometer.

School Library Journal (October 1, 2006)

Gr 3-6-Prelutsky is one of the best word crafters in the business, and this collection does not disappoint. Each entry is about a creature that is part animal and part inanimate object. For instance, the Alarmadillos have alarm clocks for bodies, and the Ballpoint Penguins can write with their beaks. The poems are full of fun and wit, with wordplay and meter that never miss a beat. The whimsical illustrations use cut-print media, old-fashioned print images, and a variety of paper textures to create a rich visual treat well suited to the poetry. The detail in the mixed-media pictures makes this a good choice for individual or lap reading, but the poetry begs to be read aloud. This is definitely a "do not miss" poetry pick.-Donna Cardon, Provo City Library, UT Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.


References:
www.mackin.com
www.amazon.com

Bibliography:

Prelutsky, J. (2006). Behold the bold Umbrellaphant and other poems.  New York: New York. Harper Collins.