1 . When Jack Prelutsky was a kid in New York more than fifty years ago, he didn’t know he would grow up to write poetry for children.
Neither of his parents read poetry to him when he was little. When his fourth-grade teacher read poems in class, he thought they seemed boring. To nine-year-old Prelutsky, poetry seemed like serious business. And Prelutsky was anything but serious. “I wanted to hear poems about myself — about outer space and sports and music,” he says. “So I started to think of poetry as punishment.”
Prelutsky had always taken voice and piano lessons, but when he attended New York’s High School of Music and Art, his love for music grew deeper. “I liked the way songs said what they had to say — the simple, direct, ordinary language they employed. I really think that’s what made me see poetry in a new light.”
Then Prelutsky took a drawing class in his early twenties and found he wasn’t very good at life drawing. But he was good at drawing imaginary animals.
In six months, Prelutsky drew a lot of imaginary animals with strange characteristics. He loved each one, but felt something was missing. “Then one evening, I looked at them and said, ‘They need poems.’ I still don’t know why I thought of it, but within half an hour, I had all the poems written.”
Publishing the poems never crossed Prelutsky’s mind in those early days. But when friends fell in love with his poems, he agreed to share them with a children’s book editor.
“She didn’t think much of my illustrations (插图),” he says, “but she told me that I was a natural poet and encouraged me to keep writing.”
At the time, Prelutsky was surprised at the editor’s encouragement. But more than forty books later, he’s still making friends and fans laugh. From monsters to frogs, Prelutsky has turned silly into an art form.
1. What can we learn about Prelutsky when he was a kid?
| A．He hated poetry. |
| B．He took sports seriously. |
| C．He found it hard to read poems. |
| D．He developed an interest in business. |
2. What did Prelutsky think of music?
| A．It was a kind of punishment. |
| B．It was something serious. |
| C．It was simple but indirect. |
| D．It helped him to love poetry. |
3. How did drawing influence Prelutsky?
| A．It drove him to love music. |
| B．It brought out his poetic skills. |
| C．It raised his confidence in writing. |
| D．It helped him become a famous painter. |
4. How did the editor feel about Prelutsky’s poems?
| A．She gave them high praise. |
| B．She was surprised by them. |
| C．She refused to publish them. |
| D．She showed no interest in them. |
5. What is a characteristic of Prelutsky’s poems?
| A．They are funny. |
| B．They are encouraging. |
| C．They are person-centered. |
| D．They are family-friendly. |
