Harvey The Hippo
Harvey the Hippo
Harvey is a huge hippopotamus
Alan Balter was born May 25th, 1939 in Chicago. He worked as a teacher for children with special needs before becoming a professor in the Special Education Department at Chicago State University. There, he prepared teachers for children and adolescents with learning disabilities and developmental delays. Along with Poetry for my Grandchildren and Everyone Else’s, his other publications include: Divided Apple: A Story about Teaching in Chicago, Learning Disabilities: a Book for Parents, and two novels entitled Birds of a Feather and Holden and Me.
Harvey the Hippo
Harvey is a huge hippopotamus
My parents' bedroom is far from mine, so I have to wonder
What the noise is every night that sounds a lot like thunder.
We don't live near the seashore, but almost every morn
I'm wakened by a noise that sounds like a fog horn.
The writer has given a humorous touch to a common incident found in many a home. Mother's lighthearted comment, "I don't mind; it's really a godsend" makes the idea more effective.
Some are as long as hoses
You buy at a garden store.
Mine can be used to smell roses
From a couple of miles or more.
I think children will like the poem. It's funny. You must have a lot of imagination to write such a poem. I like it!
Great Grandpa is a wise old man who says he's ninety-four.
He tells me that he lost his leg fighting in some war.
When I was just a little tot with eyes and nose still runny,
He swears that he forgot my name, so now he calls me Sonny.
Balter's poem reminds me of my own grandfather whom I lost 49 years ago when he was 94. I remember his two habits very lucidly. He was a frugal eater. He used to weigh his food every time...
Hear eye sit inn English class; the likelihood is that eye won't pass
An F on my report card wood bee worse than swallowing glass
It's knot that eye haven't studied, often till late at knight
Butt the rules are sew confusing, eye simply can't get them write
Very clever and funny, but it kinda blows my mind reading through this at the same time! How on earth did I manage to learn this wonderful, confusing language?! I must be converting it into...