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Before You Read
To help students appreciate how Florian expresses himself through poetic elements and humor, review the concepts of:
rhythm—a pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables in lines of poems
rhyme—similar sounds at the ends of words, usually at the ends of lines, but sometimes within lines, too).
Pun—words used one way that also have another meaning. The contrast of the meanings create humor. See the discussion of a Florian pun in the Fun with a Pun activity below.
Fun with a Pun
To help students understand what a pun is, have them look at "Masquito" on page 36 of Laugh-eteria. Help them understand that the sound of mask in the correct spelling of the word mosquito was used by the poet as a pun. Florian also uses the rhyme incognito and mosquito to talk about how a mosquito could use a "mask" to surprise its victims when it bites. With this in mind, have students:
- brainstorm homophones (words that sound alike but have different meanings and, possibly, different spellings).
- choose a homophone as the focus of a funny, punny poem that may or may not include rhyming words.
- challenge classmates to figure out the puns in each other's poems.
A Real Laugh Poem
Here's a form to use as a springboard for student poems. Have students:
- write the word laugh down the left margin of a piece of paper.
- begin each line of the poem with a word that begins with the letter of laugh that appears at the beginning of the line (in a five-line poem for the five letters L-A-U-G-H).
- tell about something that makes them laugh or something special and unique about laughter in each line.
Limericks for the Ages
Florian writes limericks about a young woman named Clare and an old person named Bruce on pages 24—25 as well an old woman named Rose and a young person named Blair on pages 138—139. Explain that a limerick is a humorous poem with a pattern of lines, rhythms, and rhymes that always begins, "There once was a ____ named _____." Have students:
- complete the first line of a limerick by filling in the blanks of the line started above.
- follow the line pattern of one of the limericks in Laugh-eteria.
- approximate the rhyme and rhythm patterns by reading the models aloud and using their ears to create a similar pattern of sound in their poems.
Laugh Traffic
In the poem "Directions to the End of the World," Douglas Florian gives his own personal directions, including right turns, left turns, and stops along the way. Students might write a poem in which they:
- give readers directions about how to laugh (and, possibly, when or where or why to laugh).
- write with or without rhyme or rhythm patterns.
- start and stop lines in their poems to indicate when new directions or parts of directions begin or end. (Notice how Florian breaks lines to show when the reader is around a bend with "When you see straight/At the bend" as an example.)
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