Be Glad Your Nose is on Your Face, by Jack Prelutsky

Post 358 - Since this is Halloween weekend, with it's focus on entertaining children (of all ages), I thought it fitting to post a children's poem this week. Before the more famous Shel Silverstein started writing children’s poetry, he was a close friend of Jack Prelutsky when they were both studying folk music and living in Greenwich Village in the 50’s to early 60’s.

Prelutsky was born in 1940 in Brooklyn, and attended Hunter College in NYC. He worked at various times as a busboy, furniture mover, folk singer, and cab driver. He says he hated poetry in grade school because of the way it was taught - his elementary school teacher gave him the impression that “poetry was the literary equivalent of chopped liver!” Fortunately for us, he rediscovered poetry in his 20s, and has devoted the years since to writing fresh, humorous verse aimed specifically at kids. He's the author of more than 30 poetry collections including Nightmares: Poems to Trouble Your Sleep and A Pizza the Size of the Sun.

In 2006, Prelutsky was named the first Children’s Poet Laureate by the Poetry Foundation. He currently lives in Washington state, and spends much of his time presenting poems to children in schools and libraries throughout the United States.

Be Glad Your Nose is on Your Face by Jack Prelutsky

Be glad your nose is on your face,
not pasted on some other place,
for if it were where it is not,
you might dislike your nose a lot.

Imagine if your precious nose
were sandwiched in between your toes,
that clearly would not be a treat,
for you'd be forced to smell your feet.

Your nose would be a source of dread
were it attached atop your head,
it soon would drive you to despair,
forever tickled by your hair.

Within your ear, your nose would be
an absolute catastrophe,
for when you were obliged to sneeze,
your brain would rattle from the breeze.

Your nose, instead, through thick and thin,
remains between your eyes and chin,
not pasted on some other place--
be glad your nose is on your face!