This week: Jack Prelutsky Edited by: eyestar~*  
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Happy February  everyone! I am thrilled to be your guest editor today.  I work a lot with children and was going through some favourite kid's poets and Jack Prelutsky popped up. I enjoy his poems and was keen to delve deeper and find more about him! Join me on the journey into this multi-talented wizard of words.
 Jack says:
"We all need ways to express ourselves, and poetry is one of mine."
"Frankly, writing poetry for children is plain old fun, and I consider myself blessed to have such a delightful career."
"Children seem naturally drawn to poetry - it's some combination of the rhyme, rhythm, and the words themselves."
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Jack Prelutsky was born on September 8, 1940 in Brooklyn N. Y. and grew up in the Bronx. He was saved and brought up by his older Uncle Charles from baby hood as he lost his family in a fire.  He did not like school or even poetry due to one teacher's boring ways and having bad experiences in his rough neighbourhood for writing a poem. I guess it was not the "thing" for a young man at the time. 
Then his musical talent was recognized (yep I said he was multi-talented} so he went to a High School Of Music and Art to train his lovely voice. He performed in musicals. He did go on to College and after flunking English three times  he dropped out.
Jack worked at many odd jobs as many writers do, and even sang in coffee shops under the name Jack Ballard. He even became friends with Bob Dylan! So cool, right?
Jack also loved to draw imaginary animals and added little poems to the pictures. One of his friends inspired him to send them to a publisher! Susan Hirschmann loved his poetry, more than the pictures that took longer to create, saying he had "natural talent". She remained his publisher until she retired 37 years later. He was only 24 at the time. His drawings and poems came out in 1967 with A Gopher in the Garden and Other Animal Poems.
He has been going strong ever since and won many awards along the way. He became the first ever US Children's Poet Laureate from 2006-2008 when the Poetry Foundation first created the award. (now called the Young People's Poet Laureate)
In 1993 The New Kid on the Block was made into an interactive story by the Living Book series and even as late as 2018 his poem "Homework, Oh Homework!" was in the national commercial for Apple's Ipad! 
Jack is married to his "love at first sight" wife Carolyn, who was a children's librarian! Ah kismet! I have read he asked her to wed when they first met. They live on Mercer Island in Washington and he is involved in internet media and education. He also has edited many anthologies as a poem collector. He is always writing and has files filled with notes! (don't we all?)
Jack tells kids and teaches on line:
He has many interests like photography , carpentry, creating collages and collects art, children's books and frog miniatures!  In his office, he has a desk, computer, reference books, his collections, toys and looks out into the trees and sky from his window. He gets ideas from everywhere! He advises to READ, and WRITE, keeping a notebook for thoughts and ideas.
http://teacher.scholastic.com/writewit/poetry/jack_home.htm
He tells them with poetry it is "better to work on what you want to say than to make up things just to get a rhyme in." 
Some of his works include:
Nightmares: Poems to Trouble your Sleep
The Swamps of Sleethe: Stories from Beyond the Solar System 2010
The Silver Moon: Lullabies and Cradle songs 2013
Children love a laugh and Jack writes wacky and fun stuff in a natural way!
From I've Lost My Hippopotamus
"A centipede was thirsty,
But to satisfy its need,
It drank too much for it to hold—
And so the centipede."
A few poems I have shared with success for kids:
http://jackprelutsky.com/jacks-poems/
 Jack is a prolific poet with a love for kids and their learning, advocating using fun poetry to illustrate concepts and using some laughter to assist learning. It is a fact that it can.
I hope you have enjoyed this trip into his life and got inspired? Or at least, maybe found another poem to share with kids you know!
Consider your own life:
 Where do you get ideas?
 What do you have in your office that might comfort or trigger inspiration? I don't have frogs, but a few fairies can be seen hovering. .
 What childhood memory or event turned you on or off poetry?
 Do you have a friend who pushed you to show your works?
 What other talents and hobbies do you have to sustain those muse-less moments?
 What will be written about you and your works in future as you keep on keeping on? What is the dream?
Thanks for reading. Write on!
Sources:
http://jackprelutsky.com/
A lovely short video with the soft spoken Jack: https://www.readingrockets.org/books/interviews/prelutsky
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Prelutsky
http://jackprelutsky.com/jacks-poems/
http://teacher.scholastic.com/writewit/poetry/jack_meet.htm
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/jack-prelutsky |
Ok kiddies. Here you go! Have some fun! 
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CARE to share any thoughts about the questions I asked in the newsletter? Here's where to do it!
And I invite you to write a children's poem about a dragon in "DreamTime Dragon's Poem Contest" !  
Thank you to these readers of my last newsletter: "Poetry Newsletter (December 11, 2019)" about Christmas Poetry. 
Monty 
"I enjoyed your News Letter very much, as I like like the language of poetry which says so much without a waste of words."
Fyn 
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Poetry: February 05, 2020 Issue [#10000]
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