Podcast – Kenn Nesbitt's Poetry4kids.com

This poem was inspired by some real-life hair-raising moments in my family. When my daughter was about six years old, she decided, without warning, to cut her own hair one morning before school. Let’s just say the results were… not great. I had to do a quick fix before we dashed out the door. Then, years later, when she was a teenager, she offered to cut her older brother’s hair. That one didn’t go so well either. And, once again, I was the emergency barber. Fortunately, she never tried to cut her parents hair or give the pets...

My friend and colleague Alan Katz , author of the “Silly Dilly” song books such as Take Me Out of the Bathtub, mentioned that going to be doing a performance called “The Joke Show” and he said that it’s called a “show” because you’re expected to “show up.” Since we both write funny poems, I jokingly asked if there “would be a showdown if I showed up?” As soon as I said it, I realized there was the seed of a poem in there. My wife was on the phone with her mother at the time and as soon as she hung up, she...

Summer is here, and the days are getting hot! I wrote this poem a couple of years ago for Storyworks 2 magazine, just in time for the end of the school year. Now that July has arrived again and the days are scorching, it felt like the perfect moment to share it on the website, along with a little “ice advice.” After all, there’s nothing better than a cool, sweet treat on a scorching day… as long as you remember how to treat your treat. This is…

Ice Pops, Ice Pops

Ice pops, ice pops.
A ta...

Sometimes the silliest ideas make for the funniest poems. This one started with a simple question: What if someone was really, really good at burping? I mean unbelievably good. That idea made me laugh, so I knew I had to run with it. The result is a poem that plays with repetition, exaggeration, and a little bit of mischief—just the kind of humor that makes poetry extra fun. I hope you enjoy meeting one of the world’s most talented burpers… even if not everyone in her family appreciates her skills. This is…

Bernadette the Burper

Be...

Welcome to Poetry4kids. I’m Kenn Nesbitt.

Have you ever found something unexpected—a hidden passage, a strange map, or a place no one else seemed to know about? Did you then keep it a secret too, or was it too good not to share?

This poem is all about discovering a secret place and exploring the unknown. It also uses repetition to build a rhythm and to heighten the sense of mystery. As you read it, see if you can feel the excitement of the narrator’s journey and maybe imagine where your own se...

Welcome to Poetry4kids. I’m Kenn Nesbitt

I thought of the idea for this poem while I was out on a brisk walk one day, feeling unusually full of energy. That got me thinking about how some kids just seem to have endless energy—always moving, always playing, always going. I began imagining what it would be like to be one of those kids, and from there the idea for “Hyper Nate” was born.

This poem is all about motion and excitement and the joy of being active. It has a bouncy rhythm and lots of...

Welcome to Poetry4kids. I’m Kenn Nesbitt.

I’ve always enjoyed writing poems about characters who are a little… well… less than excellent at what they do. There’s something especially funny about someone who tries their best but still manages to get everything hilariously wrong. Over the years, I’ve written about a pirate who’s never seen the sea, a scientist who searches for things that don’t exist, an old west bank robber who always fumbles the loot, and many more kooky characters.

This time, I thought it would be fun to take on the c...

Welcome to Poetry4kids. I’m Kenn Nesbitt. One of my favorite things about writing poems is playing with language—especially when it comes to words or phrases that can mean more than one thing. Sometimes, we use expressions that sound perfectly normal… until you stop and really think about what they say. And when you do, well, they can start to sound pretty silly.

Today’s poem is one of those. It began with a common phrase you’ve probably heard before, and turned into something completely unexpected. Let’s see what happens when everyday language takes a very...

Welcome to Poetry4kids. I’m Kenn Nesbitt.

This poem was inspired by another poet I greatly admire—Jack Prelutsky. I had been reading his poem “As Soon as Fred Gets Out of Bed,” which is a wonderfully silly poem that features underwear. That got me thinking, “Maybe it’s time I wrote an underwear poem too.”

I also remembered another poem Jack wrote years ago called “I’m Growing a Glorious Garden,” where the garden grows musical instruments instead of vegetables. That poem planted a seed in my imagination—what if something even stranger grew in the garden? An...

Welcome to Poetry4kids. I’m Kenn Nesbitt. Today’s poem is all about a well-intentioned surprise that doesn’t go quite as planned. With Mother’s Day right around the corner, one young child decides to do something extra special—make breakfast and deliver it to Mom in bed. But sometimes, even the best ideas can turn into a bit of a mess. Stick around for a funny, food-flinging adventure called…

Mother’s Day Breakfast

I brought my mom Mother’s Day breakfast in bed.
I tripped and spilled orange juice right on her head.
...

Welcome to Poetry4kids. I’m Kenn Nesbitt.

One of the things that I enjoy most about writing poems is playing with words—especially when a word sounds like something else entirely. Today’s poem is one of those where the idea came from imagining a mix-up… the kind of mix-up that might happen if you were shopping for something high-tech and got something completely unexpected instead. This is…

My Smelly Telephone

My telephone is smelly.
It’s a smelly telephone.
I wish it didn’t stink but
it’s the only one I o...

Welcome to Poetry4kids. I’m Kenn Nesbitt.

Sometimes a poem begins with just a sound—two words that almost rhyme, or a funny phrase that gets stuck in my head. That’s what happened with today’s poem. I started playing with the sounds of two familiar words, and before long, I found myself wondering, “What if there were a place where people celebrated one of these things instead of the other?” Though the result may seem a little bizarre, I had so much fun writing it that I just had to share it. This is…

An Oyste...

Welcome to Poetry4kids. I’m Kenn Nesbitt.

The seasons are changing, and it feels like winter is finally over—but spring hasn’t really started yet. Where my sister lives, people like to say they have only three seasons: summer, winter, and mud. I always thought that was a funny way to describe this in-between time of year, when the snow is melting, the ground is wet and messy, and everything turns to sludge.

So I decided to write a poem celebrating the muddy, splashy, sock-soaking season that comes right before the flowers bloom and th...

Welcome to Poetry4kids. I’m Kenn Nesbitt.

I wanted to write a poem about nature in the springtime, especially for young reader… kids in first grade. Spring is such a fun season to explore the outdoors—you never know what kinds of animals or colors you might see! So I thought it would be fun to create a simple, playful poem that includes both: a list of colorful animals that follow a child home like a parade of pets.

I hope you enjoy the rhythm, the rhyme, and the chance to imagine your own list o...

Welcome to Poetry4kids. I’m Kenn Nesbitt

With St. Patrick’s Day coming up, I thought it would be fun to write a poem about the tradition of trying to catch a leprechaun and find his pot of gold. Many kids set leprechaun traps, hoping to outsmart the tricky little creatures. But I started wondering—what if, after all that effort, you didn’t catch a leprechaun at all? What if you ended up catching something much less exciting instead?

That idea made me laugh, so I decided to turn it into this poem. I hope i...

Welcome to Poetry4kids. I’m Kenn Nesbitt.

A publisher recently asked me to write a fun poem for first graders that would help build phonemic awareness—the ability to hear, recognize, and play with sounds in words. They wanted something that would show how syllables and sounds can be changed, moved around, and combined in new ways. I had a great time coming up with silly word mashups and actually wrote several different poems for them.

In the end, the publisher chose to publish one of the other poems I wrote, but I liked this...

Welcome to Poetry4kids. I’m Kenn Nesbitt.

Have you ever dreamed about not getting any older and just staying young forever? I know I had that thought once or twice when I was a kid. But what if that wish actually came true—but not in the way you expected? This poem plays with the idea of aging in reverse, turning what might seem like a fun, magical experience into something a little more alarming!

I love writing poems that take an ordinary idea, like making a birthday wish, and turning it into something unex...

Welcome to Poetry4kids. I’m Kenn Nesbitt.

Valentine’s Day was coming up, and I had been trying for days to think of something funny to write about—but nothing seemed quite right. Then, in the middle of the night, I woke up from a sound sleep with the ending of this poem suddenly clear in my head. I grabbed my phone from the nightstand, quickly jotted down the idea, and went right back to sleep. The next morning, when I looked at what I had written, I still thought it was a good idea, so I sat...

Welcome to Poetry4kids. I’m Kenn Nesbitt.

The first time I ever saw a cow, I was about three years old. My father took me to a dairy farm, and I remember standing right next to a wooden fence, face to face with a huge cow. I was completely surprised! For many years afterward, my dad loved to tell the story of how I looked up at him and asked, “What do they do to us?”—a question that still makes me laugh today.

While most of my poems are written for kids ages 8 and up...

Welcome to Poetry4kids. I’m Kenn Nesbitt.

When I was 11 years old, my school took the sixth graders on a field trip to the mountains where there was snow. Many of the kids brought sleds or inflatable tubes to ride down the hills, and I brought a tube as well. At first, I was too scared to ride it, so I sat out and watched. Unfortunately, I also forgot to bring my lunch that day. While the other kids were eating, I finally worked up the courage to try the hill. Let’s just say it didn...

Welcome to Poetry4kids. I’m Kenn Nesbitt.

I wanted to write a poem about the feeling of not fitting in, a theme that many of us can relate to at some point in our lives. Having recently written a poem about a misunderstood snake, I decided to switch things up and tell the story from the perspective of an awkward, larger-than-life creature: a dragon. The phrase “It’s a Drag to Be a Dragon” popped into my head, and the poem grew from there, exploring the humorous challenges a dragon might face in everyday life.

Of cou...

Welcome to Poetry4kids. I’m Kenn Nesbitt. Today I’m sharing a poem inspired by one of the more unusual pets my family had when I was a kid—a boa constrictor! Our boa was a wonderful pet—gentle, calm, and friendly—but I know that many people find snakes scary, even harmless ones. That got me thinking: what if a boa could tell its own story about being misunderstood? Here’s my poem, “It’s Lonely as a Boa.” I hope you enjoy it!

It’s lonely as a boa.
Though I’m just a simple snake,
...

Welcome to Poetry4kids. I’m Kenn Nesbitt. I’ve always loved cheese. Today, as I was eating an especially cheesy pizza for lunch, the idea of an artist creating entire sculptures out of cheese seemed irresistibly whimsical and delicious. There has been a long tradition among children’s poets, such as Colin West in the UK and Jack Prelutsky in the US, of creating poems about unusual characters with strange and funny talents. I thought Skylar the Sculptor would fit perfectly into this tradition, using her imagination (and a ton of cheese) to make incredible, edible art.

Alth...

Welcome to Poetry4kids. I’m Kenn Nesbitt. Today I’d like to share a fun new holiday poem with you. With Christmas just around the corner, I found myself wondering how many days were left until the big day. The phrase “I’m Counting the Days until Christmas” popped into my head, and I loved the rhythm of the words, as well as the idea of checking off each day on a calendar while excitedly looking forward to Christmas Day. It seemed like the perfect topic for a holiday poem! I hope you enjoy this festive little rhyme about the...

Welcome to Poetry4kids. I’m Kenn Nesbitt. I grew up in a part of California where it never snowed, but every now and then my parents would take me and my brothers to the nearby mountains in the wintertime to play in the snow. We loved building snowmen and throwing snowballs at one another. Later, when I moved up north where it snows every winter, my own kids grew up doing the same—building snow forts and having snowball fights, but they got to do it in the front yard.

This poem was inspired by those memo...

Welcome to Poetry4kids. I’m Kenn Nesbitt.

With Thanksgiving just around the corner here in the US, I wanted to write a fun poem about the holiday that captures the feeling of overindulging at a big family feast.

Thanksgiving is a time for gratitude and togetherness, but it’s also a time when we often eat more than we should—something kids and grown-ups alike can relate to. I thought it would be fun to explore that universal experience from a playful perspective, imagining what it might feel like to share the aftermath of a big...

Welcome to Poetry4kids. I’m Kenn Nesbitt. A couple of years ago my friend, the children’s poet Janet Wong, asked if I would contribute a poem to an anthology she was creating with children’s literature professor Sylvia Vardell called Things We Feel. She gave me several photos to choose from as inspiration, and I particularly liked one of a young boy tossing a bowling ball. It made me think about that moment of suspense—the thrill, the hope, and the uncertainty you feel as soon as the ball leaves your hands.

As with other books in...

Welcome to Poetry4kids. I’m Kenn Nesbitt. As a student, I remember being so tired in school some days that I would fall asleep at my desk and the teacher would have to wake me up. I was never so tired in the morning that I went to school in my pajamas or bedsheet or blankets. But a friend of mine actually did this once when she was in college. She was so sleepy that she woke up at the very last minute, wrapped her sheet around herself and walked to class.

Recalling this recently, I th...

Ideas for poems can come from lots of different places. Sometimes when I write a poem, the idea starts with a single word or a phrase. In this case, I was thinking about the upcoming holidays, Halloween and Thanksgiving. Halloween made me think of monsters, including Frankenstein’s monster, which made me think of “Frankenstein’s Thanksgiving.” It occurred to me that it might be fun to write a single poem that combines Halloween and Thanksgiving into a single holiday. This poem is the result.

The Monsters’ Thanksgiving

When monsters spend Thanksgiving
at the house of F...

Welcome to Poetry4kids. I’m Kenn Nesbitt. With Halloween just around the corner, I wanted to write a poem about the holiday. I had already written a poem about spooky monsters called “The Monsters’ Thanksgiving,” so this time I thought it would be fun to come up with a poem about trick-or-treating. I imagined creating a time-saving device to help collect more candy, and the idea of an army of trick-or-treating robots came to me.

The very next day, I saw a headline that read, “Inventor Builds Six Robot Copies of Himself, Uses One to Give Speeches a...