Category: Podcast

When I was in elementary school, beginning in about the fourth grade, I was responsible for packing my own lunch every day. I even wrote a poem about it in my book Revenge of the Lunch Ladies called “I’m Getting Sick of Peanut Butter.” In that poem, I complain that my lunch has a peanut butter sandwich in it every day, and I’m getting tired of it. The original ending of that poem was, “You see, it is the only thing that I know how to make.” In other words, I had only myself to blame for the fact that my lunch was always the same thing.

When I submitted the poem to my editor, he argued that children don’t pack their own lunches, and insisted that I change the ending, so it would up as, “You see, it is the only thing my mom knows how to make.” I didn’t like that ending as much, but I could see that we were never going to agree, so I decided to compromise.

Recently, I was thinking about that, and it occurred to me that, even if most kids don’t pack their own lunches every day, they might do it every once in a while. I wondered what would happen if a kid who didn’t normally pack their own lunch suddenly had the opportunity. What might they include? Would they put in every sweet or tasty thing they could find? And that’s how this poem was born.

Today I Packed My Lunch Myself

Today I packed my lunch myself.
I got my lunch box off the shelf
and quickly filled it to the top.
I don’t know why I couldn’t stop.
That’s why I have a soda pop,
an ice cream cone, a lemon drop,
bananas, bacon, gummy bears,
lasagna, licorice, pickles, pears,
a candy bar, a chocolate shake,
an apple pie, a birthday cake,
some chips and dip, a T-bone steak…
I also have a tummy ache.

— Kenn Nesbitt

This poem was inspired by some real-life hair-raising moments in my family. When my daughter was about six years old, she decided, without warning, to cut her own hair one morning before school. Let’s just say the results were… not great. I had to do a quick fix before we dashed out the door. Then, years later, when she was a teenager, she offered to cut her older brother’s hair. That one didn’t go so well either. And, once again, I was the emergency barber. Fortunately, she never tried to cut her parents hair or give the pets a trim. But these memories made me think: what if a kid just couldn’t stop giving haircuts? This is…

My Sister Found Some Scissors

My sister found some scissors.
She climbed up on a chair.
She stood before the mirror
and snipped off all her hair.

She thought it was exciting,
and so, when she was through,
she gave the dog a haircut.
She gave the cat one too.

I even let her cut mine.
She didn’t do too bad.
But when our parents found out,
my goodness, they were mad.

She tried to be a barber.
Now she’s in trouble deep.
She practiced on our parents
while they were both asleep.

— Kenn Nesbitt

My friend and colleague Alan Katz , author of the “Silly Dilly” song books such as Take Me Out of the Bathtub, mentioned that going to be doing a performance called “The Joke Show” and he said that it’s called a “show” because you’re expected to “show up.” Since we both write funny poems, I jokingly asked if there “would be a showdown if I showed up?” As soon as I said it, I realized there was the seed of a poem in there. My wife was on the phone with her mother at the time and as soon as she hung up, she told me that her mom had given her the “lowdown.” That cinched it. I knew I had to write a showdown poem. I hope you enjoy the result.

The Showdown

The bad guys in the black hats,
and the good guys in the white,
declared there’d be a showdown
in the village square tonight.

The word went out for miles around,
so people got the lowdown.
And everyone decided they
should go down to the showdown.

With everybody driving
on the highway to the showdown,
the traffic got so bad that it
became a massive slowdown.

And in the end, the bad guys
and the good guys had no throwdown.
The roads were blocked, so nobody
could show up at the showdown.

— Kenn Nesbitt

Summer is here, and the days are getting hot! I wrote this poem a couple of years ago for Storyworks 2 magazine, just in time for the end of the school year. Now that July has arrived again and the days are scorching, it felt like the perfect moment to share it on the website, along with a little “ice advice.” After all, there’s nothing better than a cool, sweet treat on a scorching day… as long as you remember how to treat your treat. This is…

Ice Pops, Ice Pops

Ice pops, ice pops.
A tasty frozen treat.

Ice pops, ice pops.
Delicious, cold, and sweet.

Nice pops, ice pops,
in summer can’t be beat.

But don’t drop. Ice PLOPS
aren’t as good to eat.

— Kenn Nesbitt

Sometimes the silliest ideas make for the funniest poems. This one started with a simple question: What if someone was really, really good at burping? I mean unbelievably good. That idea made me laugh, so I knew I had to run with it. The result is a poem that plays with repetition, exaggeration, and a little bit of mischief—just the kind of humor that makes poetry extra fun. I hope you enjoy meeting one of the world’s most talented burpers… even if not everyone in her family appreciates her skills. This is…

Bernadette the Burper

Bernadette the burper
is the greatest in the land.
She so adept at burping
she can do it on command.

There’s never been a burper
quite as skilled as Bernadette.
She’ll burp the Happy Birthday song,
and then the alphabet.

She’ll burp the periodic table
and the fifty states.
She’ll burp the works of Shakespeare,
Wordsworth, Tennyson, and Yeats.

But every time she burps a burp
it drives her father wild.
He says they’re inappropriate
and unfit for a child.

He says she shouldn’t ever burp.
He tells her that it’s rude.
He says that burping’s impolite,
disgusting, gross, and crude.

So Bernadette agreed to stop
and held them in all day.
Her father changed his mind
when they came out the other way.

— Kenn Nesbitt

Welcome to Poetry4kids. I’m Kenn Nesbitt.

Have you ever found something unexpected—a hidden passage, a strange map, or a place no one else seemed to know about? Did you then keep it a secret too, or was it too good not to share?

This poem is all about discovering a secret place and exploring the unknown. It also uses repetition to build a rhythm and to heighten the sense of mystery. As you read it, see if you can feel the excitement of the narrator’s journey and maybe imagine where your own secret passageway might be hiding and where it might lead. This is…

I Found a Secret Passageway

I found a secret passageway
behind a secret door,
inside a secret closet that
I’d never seen before.

I tiptoed through that secret door
and down that secret hall
to find a secret room behind
a secret sliding wall.

And in that secret room there sat
a secret pirate’s chest
that held a secret map that led me
on a secret quest.

I traveled down the secret path
upon that secret map,
but tripped a secret switch and fell
inside a secret trap.

I felt around that secret trap
and grabbed a secret latch
that turned a secret handle
and unlocked a secret hatch.

A secret tunnel took me through
a secret catacomb,
then up a secret stairway where
I found myself back home.

I might have found some secret gold
beyond that secret door…
I’d tell you, but it wouldn’t
be a secret anymore.

— Kenn Nesbitt

Welcome to Poetry4kids. I’m Kenn Nesbitt

I thought of the idea for this poem while I was out on a brisk walk one day, feeling unusually full of energy. That got me thinking about how some kids just seem to have endless energy—always moving, always playing, always going. I began imagining what it would be like to be one of those kids, and from there the idea for “Hyper Nate” was born.

This poem is all about motion and excitement and the joy of being active. It has a bouncy rhythm and lots of extra rhymes to match the character’s boundless energy, and of course I had to add a little twist at the end. I hope you have just as much fun listening to it as I did writing it! This is…

Hyper Nate

My name is Nate. My normal state
is one of being hyper.
I’ve been a wild and active child
since I was in a diaper.

You’d be surprised how energized
a kid like me can be.
It’s tons of fun to run and run.
I’m filled with energy.

I’m called “live wire,” and “ball of fire,”
and “human dynamo.”
I love to skip and dash and zip.
I go, go, go, go, go!

I charge and chase and rush and race
until my hyper state
gets so extreme I lose my steam,
and then I hibernate.

— Kenn Nesbitt

Welcome to Poetry4kids. I’m Kenn Nesbitt.

I’ve always enjoyed writing poems about characters who are a little… well… less than excellent at what they do. There’s something especially funny about someone who tries their best but still manages to get everything hilariously wrong. Over the years, I’ve written about a pirate who’s never seen the sea, a scientist who searches for things that don’t exist, an old west bank robber who always fumbles the loot, and many more kooky characters.

This time, I thought it would be fun to take on the classic mystery genre, but with a detective who isn’t exactly solving any mysteries. This is her story and I hope you enjoy it!

Annette the Detective

Annette the Detective is bad at detecting.
She’s crummy at hunting for clues and inspecting.
She can’t catch the bad guys or solve any cases
by following footprints or studying faces.

She doesn’t spot obvious, telltale signs.
She can’t point out patterns or notice designs.
She has no suspicions, not even a hunch.
She’s slow on the uptake (except for her lunch).

She’s bad with disguises, like costumes and masks.
She messes up even the easiest tasks.
She bungled the case of the neighbor’s lost cat.
(The cat was asleep in her Sherlock Holmes hat.)

The criminals cheer when Annette’s on the case.
They know she won’t catch them or even give chase.
If you need a crime solved, it’s better if you
don’t work with Annette—she does not have a clue.

— Kenn Nesbitt

Welcome to Poetry4kids. I’m Kenn Nesbitt. One of my favorite things about writing poems is playing with language—especially when it comes to words or phrases that can mean more than one thing. Sometimes, we use expressions that sound perfectly normal… until you stop and really think about what they say. And when you do, well, they can start to sound pretty silly.

Today’s poem is one of those. It began with a common phrase you’ve probably heard before, and turned into something completely unexpected. Let’s see what happens when everyday language takes a very strange turn. This is…

The Sofa Ate My Father

My dad was on the sofa.
He was watching the TV
when the sofa swiftly swallowed him,
then burped and said, “‘Scuse me.”

I’d never heard the sofa speak,
so that was really weird.
But I was mainly mad because
my father disappeared.

I yelled, “Hey, that’s my dad you ate!
You have to give him back!”
The sofa answered, “Sorry,
but I had to have a snack.

“I didn’t mean to eat your dad.
I know that might seem rude,
but your dad’s a ‘couch potato,’
so I figured he was food.

“I’ll try to be more careful
from now on with what I eat,
and you’ll have him back tomorrow
once he passes through my seat.”

— Kenn Nesbitt

Welcome to Poetry4kids. I’m Kenn Nesbitt.

This poem was inspired by another poet I greatly admire—Jack Prelutsky. I had been reading his poem “As Soon as Fred Gets Out of Bed,” which is a wonderfully silly poem that features underwear. That got me thinking, “Maybe it’s time I wrote an underwear poem too.”

I also remembered another poem Jack wrote years ago called “I’m Growing a Glorious Garden,” where the garden grows musical instruments instead of vegetables. That poem planted a seed in my imagination—what if something even stranger grew in the garden? And that’s when the idea of “The Underwear Tree” came to me.

So I sat down and started imagining a tree that doesn’t grow fruit or flowers, but instead produces all kinds of colorful, comical underpants. And once I started writing, I couldn’t stop giggling.

By the way, if you enjoy poetry about underwear as much as I do, some of my other favorites are Jack Prelutsky’s My Underdog Is Overweight, from It’s Raining Pigs and Noodles, and Karla Kuskin’s A Bug Sat in a Silver Flower, from her book Moon, Have You Met My Mother?

Now, let’s take a walk out to the backyard and see what’s growing on…

The Underwear Tree

Outside, in our garden, you have to come see
the tree that we planted—an underwear tree.
Our underwear tree isn’t like normal plants;
it doesn’t grow fruit, it just grows underpants.

There aren’t any leaves on our underwear tree.
Instead, it grows briefs for my family and me.
It grows tighty-whities and cartoon-print shorts,
and colorful undies of all different sorts.

Some bloomers are blooming, some long johns as well,
but please be aware that they may have a smell.
The clothes on the underwear tree are the type
it’s better to harvest before they turn ripe!

— Kenn Nesbitt