Poetry: Who wants a cheap Rhinoceros

My book for Poetry is Who wants a cheap Rhinoceros? written and illustrated by Shel Silverstein. The book is a humorous attempt of one child to sell his pet Rhinoceros by pointing out all of the ways it can be useful to have one around the home. His list includes a rhino's ability to help with knitting and opening soda cans to eating report cards and cuddling during the cold winters. The book starts out with one page of rhyming and then moves towards simple, free verse poetry for the remainder.

Using the checklist for quality in individual poems, this book does a great job of introducing content that is accessible and interesting to all ages of readers. The text itself, especially complimented with the hilarious drawings, do a great job of engaging all readers and make it easy to follow along with, regardless of reading level. The majority of the poem falls outside of what children often associated with poetry (only the first page rhymes), so it could also be used for starting a discussion about different types of poetry and that not all poems rhyme. It provides a good example of free verse poetry and how it is different from more stereotypical poetry while also not being exactly like narratives. Overall, it is a great option for teacher's to incorporate into their unit on poetry.

While to book is a great model of free verse poetry, it does not have any great social justice applications. Two areas that could be tied in are self-love respect for others. The boy in the story creates an impressive list of things his rhinoceros is good at, which could be a starting place for creating similar style of poem a list of things either your students themselves are good at or something their friends are good at.

I don't foresee myself using this book in my future classroom, though I could see leaving it on a shelf for students to pick up and read, since I think Shel Silverstein is an incredibly accessible poet for students and could help spark their interest in poetry. If I was an English teacher in upper elementary or maybe even middle school, I could see myself using this in the way described above. Both as a way to help students expand their understanding of poetry and as an introduction to a writing assignment in which they create their own free verse poetry about all of the good qualities in themselves or a friend.