Reading Level: Grade 4
Topics: Poems about Kooky Characters, Science and Technology Poems, Space, Travel, Wordplay
Poetic Techniques: Descriptive Poems, List Poems, Wordplay
Word Count: 105

About This Poem

When I was a kid, I noticed that some letters and numbers are homophones (words that sound the same). For example 8 sounds like “ate,” 2 sounds like too, and C sounds like “see” or “sea.”

When you put them together, a group of letters or numbers that can be pronounced as a series of words is known as a “gramogram.” Chances are, you have encountered gramograms before. For example, there is a famou1 H0P3 7H47 Y0U C4N R34D 7H15s rock group called U2, which sounds like “you too,” and another famous rock group called Van Halen once put out an album called OU812 (“Oh, you ate one too”). I once even saw a license plate on a car that read IMN210S (“I am into tennis”).

I’ve always loved this kind of wordplay—or should we call it “letterplay?”—and I thought it might be fun to see if I could write a poem using letter and number homophones. In fact a few years ago, I even created a list of letters and numbers that rhyme with each other so that I would be prepared when the time came to write such a poem.

I hope you like the result. And, by the way, if you like this sort of letterplay, here are a few of other poems you might enjoy.

• Swimming Ool
• Alphabet Break
• 1 H0P3 7H47 Y0U C4N R34D 7H15
• Joe the Emoji
• I’m Srot of Srcmabled Up Tdaoy

Worksheet

Click here for a printable worksheet for this poem

From the book A Festival for Frogs

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