Reading Level: Grade 3
Topics: Food Poems, Halloween, Holiday Poems, Monster Poems
Poetic Techniques: Idioms, Pun Poems
Word Count: 56

About This Poem

There’s a word game I like to play now and then called “Change One Letter.” The object of the game is to change a word, one letter at a time, to make it morph into a completely different word. Each time you change a letter, the result must still be a real word.

For example, if I wanted to change the word NOSE into HAND, I could do it by changing NOSE to NONE, NONE to BONE, BONE to BANE, BANE to BAND, and, finally, BAND to HAND. If you would like to try this with any pair of four-letter words, try this Multi-Word Morph tool on wordplays.com.

I find it interesting how many words in English are just one letter different. While thinking about writing a Halloween poem, I noticed that the words “lemon” and “demon” are spelled the same except for the first letter. So, thinking about demons got me thinking about lemons.

At first, I thought it might be funny if someone dressed up as a lemon, thinking they were dressing as a scary demon, but I couldn’t find a way to make that work as a poem. As I continued thinking about demons and lemons, I was reminded of the old expression, “When life gives you lemons, make lemonade.”

Change a couple of letters and, presto!, you’ve got a whole new saying, perfect for a Halloween poem.

From the book My Dog Likes to Disco

Use This Poem

Would you like to use this poem in your classroom? Would you like permission to reprint, record, recite or broadcast this poem, or set it to music? Please click on one of the following links for permissions and reprint rights information:

• Webmasters
• Students
• Teachers
• Publishers, editors and anthologists