Creative Things to do with Dirty Dog Boogie

DIRTY DOG BOOGIE

Written and illustrated by Loris Lesynski
Paperback ISBN 1-55037-572-5, Library binding isbn 1-55037-573-3
Annick Press, distributed by Firefly Books

Description & Reviews

PLEASE HAVE FUN WITH THESE POEMS. That’s why they were written—first, for me the writer to have fun, and second, for you the reader to do so.

And do whatever you want with them. “Change the words, arrange the words or rearrange the beat” if you like. Use one of my starting lines to begin your own. Imitate a rhythm. Or ignore my poems altogether and write a brand new one of your own.

Everyone has rhythm and poetry inside them that can be put into wonderful phrases and poems. A delightfully readable book about this is called Awakening the Heart: Exploring Poetry in Elementary and Middle School by Georgia Heard (Heinemann 0-325-00093-X). It feels as if she’d talking right to you.

I like writing in rhyme, but poems don’t have to rhyme.

Each poem in Dirty Dog Boogie is in a different style. Here are some ideas on ways to play with the rhythm and words, and also a few notes on what kids have done in classrooms. But they are just suggestions, not homework.

Page 4: (you say, very cool, very jazzy) A boogie is a dance
(and everyone repeats) A boogie is dance
(you say) and a boogie is a jive,
(they say) and a boogie is a jive,
(you chant) a boogie’s just another way of saying I’m alive
(they chant) a boogie’s just another way of saying I’m alive
That’s echo reading, or rebound reading, and it’s so much fun it’s hard to stop once you start. The reader can put all kinds of different expressions in his or her voice. Or add sound effects. Or make either suitable or ridiculous actions.
What an excellent way for kids to practice out-loud recitation. There’s no time to feel shy or self-conscious. Shouting changes to projecting one’s voice. The timing and rhythm get into one’s bones. In olden days, people always sang or chanted together. We seldom do it in modern society but it’s still very natural to like it.
“Dirty Dog Boogie” (page 6) is one of my favorite echo reading poems because I usually break out into a plaintive dog howl after “the dog complained” and then again after “even though they yowl” (and of course the kids repeat it, in some schools more vociferously than others). Sometimes we enjoy doing it so much, we do it again, and I come home with a sore throat!
I like sprinkling other sounds besides words into poems—sighing, whooshing, snapping, sloooooowing down.
We usually start out “Don’t take them” in a low voice and then build it louder to the last line, “Don’t take them to the [pause] laundromat.”
A pause is a very useful part of the rhythm. When it fits in naturally with the underlying grid of the beat, it makes the line much more interesting. Have a look at my Reading Out Loud page.
I pretended an opera singer was performing one of my poems. You can do this with yours as well.

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I might do the entire alphabet in sausages the way I illustrated the SOS title (“Send Only Sausages, SOS”) on page 8.
It took me an entire afternoon to come up with the three other SOS phrases:
Seven Orange Salamanders, SOS.
Sleeping Over Saturday, SOS.
Save Old Sandwiches, SOS!
and then a third grade I went in to see the next day had come up with a hundred. Sweet or Sour. Say Okay Soon. Smelly Old Socks. Stars of Silver. Seventy-One Sunflowers. Etc. etc. etc. Wow!
From “Why...?” on page 9: When you say a word over and over again, it can turn into something that sounds quite strange or funny:
fidgetfidgetfidgeting (page 20)
Because because because because (page 9)
When it’s repeated like that, an ordinary word can take on the most ridiculous sound. For instance, crackle. Or oily. Flicker. CRASH! It’s also fun to do this with people’s names. CHRIStopher, CHRIStopher, CHRIStopher sounds like an engine. Ashley Ashley Ashley Ashley becomes waves lapping up against the beach.
Here’s a project for a very brave teacher: each student can come up with a way to chant his or her own name over and over again, combine it with a specific repetitive body motion (waving, jerking up and down, twirling) and then in the centre of the room, everyone can perform their bits together to make the most unusual noisy name machine you've ever heard.
Some kids come to a poetry reading groaning inside. They think it’s going to be boring and sentimental and full of sneaky hidden meaning. For them, I wrote “I Hate Poetry.” This poem can be done with a lot of expression. Lively rhyming is a good way to plunge into the rhythm and beat of language. It’s easier to move to more serious or thoughtful poems when you know how to enjoy listening to the flow of language.
“Monkeys” (page 11) requires quite precise diction, which isn’t at all monkey-like. Mambo, shimmy and waltz are names for different dances. There are many more different dances—and the names are all so lively! Like tango or farandole, rumba, salsa, samba. How about the hustle or the jitterbug? Would you rather polka or twist? Look up other dance terms.
Or go here for tons of information for kids about dance stories, terms, instructions and illustrations.
I really wasn’t able to draw what I wanted for the poem “Sunpuddles” (page 12), that’s why I said I was leaving it for kids to illustrate. And they have! Sometimes I get to see a whole bulletin board of Sunpuddle illustrations. They glow!

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When you read “Closer to Home” out loud, take it very slowly, with everyone’s eyes closed (except yours). You can easily imagine coming home from the cottage late Sunday night in the rain. You can hear the windshield wipers.
“Spring a Little” is just silly but it’s one of my faves. I started saying “I like it a lottle” when I wanted to say I liked something very much. Is it okay to change words? YES. It’s excellent to know how words are supposed to be spelled and said, and it’s fun to chop them up and change them for poems and stories. Who owns words? WE do.
Read “Laaaaaaaziness” (page 14) as slowly and languidly as possible, with everyone standing up and swaying but not quite falling over.
Do variations of common words—like I did with mosquito, turning it into mozza keeto (“Mozza Mozza,” p. 15). This is my favorite poem. It always get a request for a second echo reading.
Break words into parts in your own poems. Try refrigerator: re-FRIDger-IDger-IDger-ator. If you come up with any really funny ones, I’d love to hear about them.
“Sock Fluff” is another poem that gets requests. “Do ‘Sock Fluff,’ do ‘Sock Fluff”!” kids call out. If you’re reading it aloud, pause and use actions at the lines
“I grab them...
and dry them....
and tuck them back in”.
Once I made up a sock design contest for a school. You can print out Original Sock Design and try it yourself.
Everybody understands why baby toes are different from 8-year-old toes (“When I Was a Baby,” p. 18). When I do echo reading with this poem, we all hold the pretend baby and make lots of kissy noises at its imaginary feet.
How fast can you do “Bear Toes” (p. 18) and still have it sound like real words? Maybe your class would like to write their own tongue-twisters. The hardest bit?
bird toes
boy toes
girl toes
toy toes
Have you ever had this experience like the poem on page 19—always spelling some big word like electronic perfectly but slipping up on little ones like you’re or girl?
Fidget is such a good word (p. 20). It describes exactly what it means so perfectly, it would make you feel fidgety, even if you didn’t understand English. Can you think of another word that does the same thing? (For example… crackle. Or
“Housesong” (page 21) is about how there’s always so much low-level noise around us—the refrigerator humming, computers giving off that low buzz, TV almost always somewhere in the background. Even the lights in the ceiling of your classroom might make a fizzy sound.
Then I thought, hey, my head is like that nowadays too, full of noise. So I repeated the poem changing house to head. You can do this too, try your own variations on poems you come across.
Whispery background choruses are a lot of fun in a group: Scrub scrub scrub in “Dirty Dog Boogie,” fidgetfidgetfidgeting (p.20), and cold, wild whoooooshing for “Wind” (page 23).

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A grade three class did their own variations of “Wet Feet: A Winter Chant.” They wrote poems that started...
How can anyone be happy when there’s broccoli to eat? or
How can anyone be happy when they get the chicken pox?
AND THEN (unprompted by the teacher) they did diagrams to go with them, like a cross-section of broccoli with labels on the parts they found particularly yucky, and even a drawing of a sick kid with labels on the spots on her arms, legs, nose etc.
“Why Won’t My Boy...?” is based on a true story I heard about a mother knitting her children their winter hats and mittens from cat fur from around the house.
This is what you, too, as a writer can do: hear something, mull it over, change it, play with it, then put it into a story or poem. It’s best at if you can write down these scraps of ideas when they come to you. At least have a place in your brain to keep your observations.
What if your mother knew how to make other things from junk around the house, like a t-shirt out of dust, or furniture from glued-together crumbs?
“Snowy Sunday with Homework” (page 27): If you’ve seen a dog leaping into snowdrifts as if they were ocean waves, you know exactly what this poem is about. Cats don’t do this. Cats get their toes ever so slightly damp in the snow on the porch and then turn around and give you a terrible glare that says THIS IS ALL YOUR FAULT. (Tell me what other funny things your dogs and cats do.)
When you read “Can’t Sit Still” out loud, at first you go very fast, then suddenly stop. Try it. I think it could use several more stanzas, if you feel like writing them.
A fourth grade boy made a microphone from tinfoil, borrowed a white jacket from his Dad, and had four girls doing a doo-whop chorus behind him. (He wrote the chorus himself, based on lines in the poem.) We could have been in Las Vegas.
Try “If I Had a Brudda” (page 29) in a Brooklyn accent, or the way Sylvester would speak. When I do this as echo reading, I always make the sound of the pool cue hitting the ball and the whole room repeats it—very funny. I add a question-mark tone to “Brad’d beat up any kid that boddered me at school?” because even the best older brother shouldn’t do that. Out loud, I do the ending like this: I wish I had a brudda—a really poifect brudda—like imaginary Brad.” Kids can write their own variations:
If I had a sista, I would call my sista Slug....
If I had an elephant, I think I’d call him Max.....
Some kids correct me when I say “brudda.” For them, we do a second echo reading pronouncing the words extra-posh, as if we were dukes and duchesses:
If I had a brother, I should call my brother Bradley.
Bradley’d treat me very well, and never treat me badly. The more pompous the better.
This is a really good classroom project: have kids illustrate “How I Lost My Appetite” (page 30). Since no one knows what an appetite actually looks like, there’s no way to get it “wrong”—you won’t believe the interesting range of results. The teachers should do an illustration of their own appetites as well.
You can do with names what the dinosaur did on page 32 with “Nobody Knows”. Jason Morris becomes Bason Borris, Tason Torris etc.
I introduce “Nobody Knows” by saying that many of my poems are funny but life isn’t all funny, is it, and I hope everyone will share this more personal and serious poem with me. (I sound extremely earnest when I say this, and slightly tragic.) I begin it normally, and slowly become more and more melodramatic. At first people don’t know whether I’m kidding or not, so they stifle their giggles just in case they’re wrong. When they realize it’s a joke poem and begin to laugh a little, I look deeply hurt that they’re not sharing my serioisity. By the end of this poem, we’re all laughing. I’ve seen kids perform this poem extra-melodramatically, with clasped hands and theatrically pitiful expressions on their faces.
Courtney wrote to me, “I love your book Dirty Dog Boogie and I read the poems to my dog.” (To your dog?!?!?!) Melissa said, “I really love reading your book Dirty Dog Boogie because it has a great beat.” (Thanks, Melissa!) Evan sent me a very good poem called “Bwats.” Go to the Contact Loris page for a snailmail address if you’d like to write a real letter to me on real paper.

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The next page is about dogs and poetry in the classroom.