Reading Level: Grade 3
Topics: Animal Poems, Wordplay
Poetic Techniques: Anthropomorphism & Personification, Descriptive Poems, Repetition, Tongue Twister, Wordplay
Word Count: 48

About This Poem

One of my favorite old-time poets is Carolyn Wells who wrote a wonderful collection of children’s poetry in 1899 called The Jingle Book. The Jingle Book contains some of my favorite tongue-twister poems of all time, including “The Butter Betty Bought” and “The Tutor.”

But perhaps the most ingenious poem in the book is one called “The 4.04 Train” (pronounced “The four-four train”). In that poem, she is able to say the word “four” or “for” nine times in a row and still make sense.

Recently, I was thinking about her poem and began to wonder if there were any other numbers had multiple meanings and decided to write a poem using the number two, and it’s homophones, too, and to. The result was this poem about a toucan in a tutu. I hope you have as much fun reading it as had writing it.

From the book The Elephant Repairman

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