Science Verse

Okay. First of all, ignore the other reviews that rant about the unevenness of the poetry in here. Whoever said that all poetry must be measured exactly, like a recipe for the perfect peach pie? Lighten up people! Last time I checked, this book was in the children's section. The idea here is to have FUN. You can read this to your little ones, and they may enjoy the crazy little illustrations and such, but I think the older crowd will appreciate it even more. (By older, I'm talking about middle schoolers and high schoolers, but adults will hopefully get the humor in it as well). The more you know your science terms and/or poetry, the more you will laugh! There are some great twists on classic poems like Edgar Allan Poe's "The Raven" and Thayer's "Casey at the Bat". My personal favorite was the section entitled, "Why Scientists Don't Write Nursery Rhymes", particularly the one based on Jack Be Nimble - made my test tubes shake with delight.

I've used this book in my biology class for 9th graders. They love it when I read a passage from it to start a unit. For the ecology unit, I read/sang the poem on food chains and then asked the students to write their own poem to a song about a theme in ecology. The verse in this book is original and fun for all ages!

"Science Verse" and " Math Curse" both are hilarious books. The tapes they come with also come with the funnyness of the books. I find "Science Verse" a lot more non-thinking-about-it book than Math Curse, but "Math Curse" is more brain racking.

This book is good for students. It helps them see things in a different format and learn in different ways. By following the guidelines of the written material, the students can come up with their own ideas and write them in a new way, although their verse may not be as clear as the book. It gets them thinking about the material presented in class in a new way and process it differently. It has been said that not all children process information in the same way. Some may learn by listening to poetry from the book or by what other students write.

This book is a ton of fun by a couple of very funny and clever guys. Apologies to Daniel Cortesi, who requires that everything he reads be a definitive treatise on something written a century ago, but this book does defy some widely-held poetic constraints. Unfortunately for snobs like Mr. Cortesi, writers are free to express themselves however they like, and need not first cosult the rulebook. In fact, some artists delight in scrapping the rules, as unsettling as that is to old chestnuts like our pompous Mr. Cortesi. If only, I guess, all writers would write in a way with which Mr. Cortesi is comfortable, the way to which he has become accustomed, etc. Personally, "Because It Has Always Been Done That Way" has never been reason, on its own, to do anything. And frankly, I don't get what purpose there is at all in skewering a work of art that you happen not to like. Why not just move on to something that ftis into your very narrow notion of what is worth reading, and leave it be? Why does it need to be panned? I love this book, and my students love it, and so will many other people who haven't got their head stuffed completely up Chaucer's behind.