Jack Prelutsky’s Beast Bazaar
The Clocktopus
Emerging from the salty sea,
A wondrous beast appears.
It clearly is a CLOCKTOPUS,
We marvel as it nears.
It moves with slow precision
At a never-changing pace,
Its tentacles in tempo
With the clock upon its face.
While undulating east to west
Across the swirling sand,
It ticks away the minutes,
And it has a second hand.
We watch it for an hour
And it never goes astray—
There’s nothing like a CLOCKTOPUS
To tell the time of day.
From Behold the Bold Umbrellaphant, Greenwillow Books, 2006.
The Snoober
The Snoober has eleven heads,
eleven legs on which it treads,
eleven tails, eleven eyes
to watch the world and scan the skies.
The Snoober has eleven wings,
eleven songs it often sings
with all of its eleven beaks . . .
the Snoober lives eleven weeks.
From My Dog May Be a Genius, Greenwillow Books, 2008.
The Spotted Pittapotamus
The Spotted Pittapotamus
Lurks on a rocky shelf,
And if you do not spot it first
You’re in a spot yourself,
For it has a pesky penchant
To precipitously pounce
On unprepared pedestrians
And eat them, ounce by ounce.
This procedure is unpleasant,
As it takes a month or two
Till you’re thoroughly digested
And there’s nothing left of you.
When passing through its territory,
Watch the rocks a lot,
For the Spotted Pittapotamus
Is difficult to spot.
From I’ve Lost My Hippopotamus, Greenwillow Books, 2012.
There’s a Blopp in My Room
There’s a Blopp in my room!
There’s a Blopp in my room!
I’d better be fetching
a mop and a broom.
To quickly evict a persnickety Blopp,
the trick is to use
both a broom and a mop.
A broom but no mop
is of dubious use,
the Blopp simply giggles,
you feel like a goose.
And likewise a mop
is a flop by itself,
the Blopp merely hops
on the nearest high shelf.
But wielded in tandem,
a broom and a mop
will totally stop
the most obstinate Blopp.
The Blopp will depart,
running fast, going far,
and you will be Bloppless,
as most people are.
From It’s Raining Pigs & Noodles, Greenwillow Books, 2000.
The Detested Radishark
In the middle of the ocean,
In the deep deep dark,
Dwells a monstrous apparition,
The detested RADISHARK.
It’s an underwater nightmare
That you hope you never meet,
For it eats what it wants,
And it always wants to eat.
Its appalling, bulbous body
Is astonishingly red,
And its fangs are sharp and gleaming
In its huge and horrid head,
And the only thought it harbors
In its small but frightful mind,
Is to catch you and to bite you
On your belly and behind.
It is ruthless, it is brutal,
It swims swiftly, it swims far,
So it’s guaranteed to find you
Almost anywhere you are.
If the RADISHARK is near you,
Pray the beast is fast asleep
In the middle of the ocean
In the dark dark deep.
From Scranimals, Greenwillow Books, 2002.
BaRDvaRkS
BARDVARKS think they’re poets
And persist in writing rhyme.
Their words are uninspired
And a total waste of time.
But BARDVARKS do not know this,
So not only do they write
With unbearable pretension—
They incessantly recite.
BARDVARKS have no talent
For composing simple verse.
They don’t improve with practice
And in fact are getting worse.
Undeterred, they keep on writing
And reciting every day.
That’s why BARDVARKS are a problem—
You can’t make them go away.
From Stardines Swim High Across the Sky, Greenwillow Books, 2012.