Creative Things to do with Nothing Beats a Pizza

Various pictures from Nothing Beats a Pizza

NOTHING BEATS A PIZZA

Written and illustrated by Loris Lesynski
Paper ISBN 1-55037-700-0, Library Binding ISBN 1-55037-701-9
Annick Press, distributed by Firefly Books

Description & Reviews

THIS BOOK BEGAN WITH THE SILLY SOUND OF THE TITLE. The title bounced into my head one day and I started gathering old poems and writing new poems. Some of them then turned out to be about pizza, some not. I think poems and pizzas have a lot of similarities. Read on to find out what they are.

An obvious idea-starter for poems or prose with this delicious book is The Power of Pizzative Thinking—can you put the heat under your creativity by inventing different kinds of pizza: breakfast pizza? monster pizza? dinosaur pizza? How about drawing a birthday cake decorated like pizza? One kid did Vampire Pizza but it was too gross to show you. This book has snowman pizza, cloud pizza, even a sneeze that sounds like PEEEE-ZA!
Poems are meant to be said out loud. A picture of a sandwich isn’t a real lunch (page 4). Balls that don’t move aren’t any fun. Poems said only inside your head are the same—not full of life the way they’ll be the minute you read them aloud.
Pizzas have shapes, not always the same, and ingredients in all kinds of different combinations. Doesn’t that sound just like poems? After you do a wholeclassful echo reading of “Nothing Beats A Pizza” on page 5, you can try out “Nothing Beats a Poem” and then “Make a poem bake a poem…” next to “Make a pizza bake a pizza….”
How slowly and then how quickly can you say the stanzas at the bottom of the page???
“Bizzy Boys” (page 6) has led to kids writing poems called “Giggly Girls” and “Teasing Teachers.” I love alliteration, when words begin with the same letter. It’s so melodious. (My name Loris Lesynski is alliteration. Let me know if yours is too.) I also like homonyms a lot, such as a “herd” of buffalo wondering what he’s “heard.” (What he’s heard, of course, is a bunch of bizzy boys approaching, and he’s very nervous.)
See a whole list of homonyms (like pause and paws, cell and sell, cents and sense).
Many girls have written girls’ versions of “A Guy’s Gotta Move” (page 6). Send me some more.
One day on a school visit I was hanging around in the hallway between readings, and whhhhooom, around the corner came a boy going backwards as fast as you can imagine. “What’s your name?” I called out. “Max!” he replied and continued on, disappearing around another corner. Suddenly I heard a scrambling sound followed by a crashing sound followed by the noise pencils and books make when flying up in the air and then falling down the stairs. I went home and wrote “Backward Max” (page 7) immediately! (Max didn’t get hurt, but he sure didn’t go backwards down the stairs ever again.)
More about “Backwards Me, Backwards You” coming up.

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Names names names—everybody has one (or more), even dogs and cats have names and some people give names to their houses or their cars. Sometimes a whole bunch of babies are given the same name all across the country, and that’s how you can end up with two Adams, three Zachs or seven Amandas later on in one class. That’s what I came across on a school visit—well, not really seven, but five Amandas. The title “Too Many Amandas” was just right.
You could write a “Too Many ...” poem of your own. “Too Many Tylers” or maybe “Too Many Brothers.” Just don’t write “Too Many Teachers” or you’ll get into too much trouble.

ART NOTE: People sometimes think that artists and illustrators have all the pictures they want to draw already in their heads. This isn’t true. Book illustrators especially look up “reference material”—they want to know what submarines, jungles and forklifts really look like before they draw them. I wanted to put a singing dog in the picture that goes with the “Bad Mood Blues,” so I went to the library and found this fabulous book (left), “Know Your Dog,” (Stoddart) which had a good howling-dog photo in it. I was then able to adapt it to my singing dog. This isn’t considered tracing, cheating or copying. Even if you’re going to do a cartoon of something and make it funny or lopsided, it’s still good to know what it looks like in real life.

“I Look in the Mirror,” page 9: Have you ever looked at a photograph of yourself and remembered the exact moment it was taken, how you were feeling inside, and what you were thinking? Can you tell any of that from the picture? Can other people? Do people know you just because they know who you are?
What if you found out the name you thought was your name really wasn’t, that your birth certificate had another name on it altogether—would you be different?
Look in the mirror. I hope you will write a poem about what you see (it doesn’t have to rhyme, or be long). Put your name on it and the day, the month and the year. You might want to draw a self-portrait to go with it. On one of the pages in A Bit About Loris there’s a drawing I did of myself when I was six. I can still remember how much I liked that new red raincoat, as shiny as a candy apple.
Martian pizza, cats’ pizza, and candy pizza (page 12), what can you add to these very peculiar ideas?
“Mock Pizza” is about all the fake, artificial and chemical ingredients that go into snack food nowadays. Is this what you want to eat? Even if it tastes good?

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“Old, Cold Pizza” sounds like a sad poem because the kid has no one to have breakfast with, but actually leftover pizza makes a very tasty meal. Being alone in the house is sometimes lonesome, though. Makes a good poem topic.
Sometimes when kids write to me about this book, they sign off in the style of the poem “Once Upon a Time-ee-o.” All the best-i-o, they say. I wonder what other words you can add ee-o to. (TV-ee-o? Run-ee-o and jump-ee-o? You can’t say pizza-ee-o though, makes you hiss.)
Is there anything worse than NOT UNDERSTANDING what you’re being told NOT to do? (“No Smirchling Allowed,” page 17.) How can you follow the rules when you don’t know what they mean? That’s what this poem is about.
The only way for people (especially grownups) to be fair about making rules (especially for kids) is to explain what they mean.
How about writing your own definitions for splurching, flitzing, klumpeting and sneeping? I think a snitz is obvious. But I have no idea what flitchering is, and probably never will.
“The Clean Dog Boogie” (page 19) should make you want to RUN and find a piece of paper to write your own poem about a truly useful pet. A dog that does homework. A cat that licks up dust. A hamster that takes cell phone messages.

By the way, did you notice how sometimes I’ve snuck the page numbers into the illustrations? On 19, the number is part of the pattern in the rug the dog is devouring. On page 12 it’s in shiny chrome on the Martian’s spaceship. Find the number yourself on page 24.

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“Ruby,” page 20, is about my friend Barb’s dog, and it was her daughter Zoe who came up with the term “full of pounce.” Thanks, Zoe! Puppies and kittens fall asleep instantly. If you have a pet you really like (or one that drives you crazy), that makes an excellent topic for a story or a poem (rhyming or not-rhyming). Some pets are so ridiculous, the whole family has stories about the antics they’ve been up to. Good idea to write these down.
It’s funny how some kids like lots of commotion and noise and activity all around them while they concentrate on homework. How about you? Or do you like “Sigh…lence” (page 21)?
“The Bad Mood Blues” (page 22) is perfect for cool, jazzy echo reading. You can vary some of the lines, change others, give it the rhythm you want. Really give this one expression with your voice. “Buster’s Cat Singing” too. Both of these are no “roses are red, violets are blue” rhymes but a challenge: concentrate on your diction, pronounce the words as if you were in a play. If you can’t get the rhythm the way you want it, e-mail me and we’ll find a way to do it over the phone.
That’s Buster, my friend Sandra’s cat. Buster is ENORMOUS. You could use him for a sofa cushion. Or a sofa.
This poem comes from my own experience. When I’m feeling kind of low, or rattled, I need to do something very rhythmic: walk, bicycle, drum, listen to music with a good beat. That raises my spirits and unscrambles my brain.
Did you know—before you came to “Taste Buds” on page 24—that you have over ten thousand taste buds? Some of them are for sour, some for sweet, some for bitter and the rest for salty. Cats don’t have taste buds for sweet, so there’s no point in giving them sugar-coated crunchies.
Do you like sourness as much as the boys in “We Love Sour!” (page 25)? People who make sour candy sure hope so. My sister used to eat pickled onions and pickled peppers right from the jar when she was little. Tastes always make good topics for poems, whether it’s something you love or something you absolutely can’t stand.

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“Lately I’ve Been Late a Lot” (page 26) s what you might say when you feel like slowing down everything down and just llooking around. It’s a summer feeling. So is “Cloud Pizza,” the way we all lie back and watch clouds on hot summer days. “Play Ball” is kind of a summer tongue twister. You should definitely try writing a tongue twister of your own. Make your whole class say it faster and faster. You might have to ask the teacher to take out tongue twisting insurance in case they get hurt. Some sounds are just impossible to say too close together!
There’s more to time than just numbers. You can take the title “Morning O’Clock” (page 27) and use it in a dozen different ways. One kid wrote a poem called “Home O’Clock” about how good it felt when it was time to go home from someplace unpleasant. Another one wrote that as far as her dog and cat were considered, the time was always CatPat O’Clock and DogEarScratch O’Clock.
If you’ve never noticed these marks on the sidewalk before, now you’ll see them every Fall (“Leaves,” page 28). I like writing about something when I suddenly become aware of it, even if it was there yesterday and the day before but I just didn’t notice. What makes something grab your attention right now when it’s been there all along? I think this kind of observation makes the best writing. It can be about things you see, things you think, things you notice for the first time about your friends, ideas you finally connect together.
Ever wonder why they make such a big deal about no two snowflakes ever being the same when no two anythings are really the same? That’s my question, anyway, so I put it in a poem (“No Two Snowflakes,” page 29). Two pages ago it was summer, last page was Fall, so this seemed like a good page to put the winter pizza poem on.
Do you know anybody who does this (“How Sam Eats,” page 30)—chomping around the edges of their sandwich until there’s the middle left? Do you know anyone else who only likes the pointy tips of the pizza slices? If the only poems you ever wrote were about people’s eating quirks, you’d still have hundreds of poems!
Some people are very picky, fussy eaters. So I thought I would write a poem comparing them to very picky, fussy writers. Picky eaters want their food to taste just right. Writers want their poems and stories to sound just right. See—not that different! (“Good Advice,” page 31.)

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Dear Readers: I felt so much like I was talking directly to kids while writing Nothing Beats A Pizza that it was hard to end it and say goodbye.
Aside from having a good time with pizza poems, taste bud ideas and housecleaning dogs, this is also what I wanted to say in this book: MAKING something takes time (pizzas or poems). I used to think that if something took me a lot of time and preparation, it meant I wasn’t good at it! But pizzas need to have ingredients, and then the ingredients have to be put together the right way and cooked. Writing has to have many parts to it, too, and poems and stories have to be “cooked,” which means: thought about, and revised, and rearranged, and then thought about again until they’re ready. It requires patience and sometimes extra work. But in all cases it’s worth it. It’s how you get the best results.
Pizza ingredients are… cheese and tomatoes and pepperoni and mushrooms. You can be very practical when you describe ingredients, or very poetic.
What are these ingredients for: balloons, cake, laughing, presents? A birthday party! What about these ingredients, what do they make when they’re together: suspense, humor, great characters, terrific events? A good book.
How would you list the ingredients of a particularly terrific day? Of a terrible horrible bad one? What are the ingredients of a friendship, or an adventure? What are the ingredients of sports? Of music?
I would be so pleased to hear some of your ideas. Write to me if you have time.

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Witches’ Pizza and kids’ drawings are on the next page.