Sleepy Snoozy Cozy Coozy

Hello and Happy Poetry Friday! Be sure to visit Tricia at The Miss Rumphius Effect for Roundup.

Today you can find my niece Anna's artwork "Imagination Window" and the poem it inspired over at A Penny and Her Jots. Thank you, Penny, for inviting Anna and me to be a part of your marvelous blog series featuring inter-generational family art collaboration! I want to do more of this in my life. :)

And now I am happy to share with you a Cybils nominated poetry book SLEEPY SNOOZY COZY COOZY: A Book of Animal Beds by Judy Young, illus. by Michael Glenn Monroe. On each spread readers meet a new animal -- mole, beaver, alligator, dolphin. The poems are untitled and all end with the same closing two lines:

"Place where you won't lay your head
But to a [animal name here] it's a bed."

You'll find some fun nonsense words, as the book's title suggests. There's also a info box on each spread, and something I love is that each info box ends with a question, like "How long do you sleep?" Or, "Do you curl up to sleep, too?" This is a wonderful way to engage young readers!

Here's my favorite spread:

In the tall grasses of a glade
A spider weaves from blade to blade
Up and down and flow and ebb
Until he climbs onto his web.

A springy stringy
Oh so clingy
Frail and flossy
Quite criss-crossy

Sticky tacky
Stay way backy
Place where you won't lay your head
But to a spider it's a bed.

- Judy Young
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"Stay way backy." Ha! :)