This book is all about using you imagination to picture what you are reading. making the stories come to life in your mind and then describing them in detail to someone else. The pictures help spark the imagination, but the mind adapts to the child. The monsters, inventions, creatures, and stories become real and dance through the child's mind like a daydream. I would read this to 2nd grade children.

Summary: This is a poetry anthology, filled with poems with imaginary aspects. The poems are fun to read, some can be exciting and scary, but they all rely heavily on imagination. There are poems about made up creatures like the Leathery Gumberoo, the Nonny bird, the Flotz, Subbergump, Bobcaterpillar, Ookpik. and more!

Personal Reaction: Very cute poems, I imagine these are fun to read to a classroom.

Classroom Extension Ideas:
1. Find new vocabulary words from the poems and do a "dictionary scavenger hunt" type of game
2. Write a poem about a made-up creature all your own and then draw it!
3. If aliens saw humans for the first time, what kind of poem would they write about us? ( )

Great book of imaginary poems. It was a perfect start for a art/literacy lesson. The students built their own creatures and wrote their own poems describing them.

Another great collection of poetry selected by Prelutsky. General theme revolves around silliness. Brightly colored illustrations on each page. Title and author indexes. ( )

This book is full of imaginary creatures of all shapes and sizes who's habits, character, and actions are put into rhyme. The rhymes in many of the poems occur every line giving it a sing song quility. However, many of poems will rhyme only the third or fourth line. These are more difficult to keep a cadence to or to find a reading rhythem.
I did enjoy this book because so many of the creatures are beyond belief. Many though are shown to enjoy children (to eat). One such creature is "The Alphabet Monster" who at the end of the poem will eat "y" ,"o" ,"u".
I must say that from all the poems in this book, my favorite poem was one about a friendly dragon that lives in the bath tub and could only be seen by the child taking the bath. I love the line; "My dragon's very gentle, My dragon's very kind, No matter how I pull its tail, My dragon doesn't mind." I really love the idea of a gentle, friendly dragon.
There are several poems in this book that would be wonderful to use to introduce poetry to students. I think there are several even the kindergarten and first graders would enjoy. I think they would like the sing-song sounds of many of these poems . I also think that they would love looking at the illustrations of all the creatures.
I think another way to use this book in the classroom would be to have the students draw and color an outragious creature of their own then write a poem about what they have just drawn.