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One Night I Couldn't Sleep, or How I Wrote Scranimals
I've been writing children's poetry for almost forty years, yet much of the creative process still remains a mystery to me. For
example, why is it that I can look at an ordinary object nine-hundred ninety-nine times and have no particular inspiration about it whatsoever, and then suddenly, on the thousandth time, see that
object in an entirely new way and work it into a poem? The truth is that I simply don't know—it's just part of the magic of the human brain. However, after all these years, I have learned a fair
number of devices to help the creative process along and I'd like to share some of them with you.
One thing is certain, whenever you do have an inspiration, you should treasure it and try not to lose it. Write down all
your ideas immediately!!! You will probably forget them if you don't, and that's why I'm never without a notebook. Ideas are like tree branches. Every branch leads to dozens or hundreds
more—and so it is with ideas.
One night I couldn't sleep, so I got up, watched a little TV, and ate a snack. I was peeling a banana when a documentary about
pythons and anacondas came on...BOOM! I had an idea. It suddenly occurred to me that the last three letters of banana were also the first three letters of anaconda. I though it
might be fun and interesting to combine them and wrote the word bananaconda. Now there was no way I was getting back to sleep. I turned off the TV and went to work. Then I used another of my methods—I made a list. First I listed things about bananas...they're long, yellow, slippery, they have skins, and so on. Then I listed things about snakes...they're also long, they also have skins, they shed those skins, and so on. I wrote a poem called, "Oh Sleek Bananaconda," which combines qualities of both bananas and anacondas:
Oh sleek BANANACONDA,
You longest long long fellow,
How sinuous and sly you are,
How slippery, how yellow.
You slither on your belly,
And you slither on your chin.
You're only unappealing
As you shed your slinky skin.
As soon as I finished that poem, I started thinking of other possible combinations of animals with fruits/vegetables, or animals
with flowers, or birds with mammals. I joined a shark with a radish to make a radishark, rhinoceros with a rose to make a rhinocerose, and an ostrich with a cheetah to make an ostricheetah.
I had a lot of fun doing this, and soon realized that I'd come up with the makings of an unusual book.
I worked on these ideas for months. That's another strategy—you have to be persistent. Eventually I created an entire island
populated by odd hybrid creatures, and put them in a book called Scranimals. I was extremely fortunate to have the book illustrated by Peter Sís, and was so delighted and inspired by his art that I immediately sat down and wrote a sequel. This second book has given me some new ideas, which now are keeping me up nights. Hopefully you'll see poems based on these new ideas in books soon. If not, I'm still having lots of fun, and that's the last thing I'm going to mention. I always try to have a good time when I'm writing. The words come out easier that way. •
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About the Author:
Jack Prelutsy has been making words rhyme for over thirty-five years. His life as a poet has come as a complete
surprise to him, his family, teachers, and schoolmates. He showed no early talent as a writer, and can recall only one occasion when he composed a poem during his school days. It
appeared in his junior high school yearbook. After being ambushed by some boys after school for writing a poem, Jack concluded the messing around with poetry could be dangerous
to his health.
That all changed in 1967, when he published his first book of humorous verse, A Gopher in the Garden. Since
then, he has gone on to produce over fifty books of poetry, including such works as The New Kid on the Block, Ride a Purple Pelican, Nightmares: Poems to Trouble Your Sleep, Hoorah
for Diffendoofer Day!, and The Gargoyle on the Roof. Jack has also compiled a number of poetry anthologies, the most recent of which is The 20th Century Children's Poetry Treasury.
Currently he is happily spending much of his time in a new workshop that he and his wife built next to their house on
an island near Seattle—and he hasn't run out of ideas for new poems...yet.
Recent books by Jack Prelutsky include:
Scranimals illustrated by Peter Sís (Greenwillow, 2002)
The Frogs Wore Red Suspenders illustrated by Petra Mathers (Greenwillow, 2002)
Awful Ogre's Awful Day illustrated by Paul O. Zelinsky (Greenwillow, 2001)
It's Raining Pigs and Noodles illustrated by James Stevenson (Greenwillow, 2000)
The 20th Century Children's Poetry Treasury [anthology] illustrated by Meilo So (Knopf, 1999)
The Dragons are Singing Tonight illustrated by Peter Sís (Greenwillow, 1993)
To contact this author or illustrator, please use the information for his or her publisher provided on our list of CBC member publishers.
Meet the Author/Illustrator Archives
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