Shel Silverstein - The Crocodile's Toothache

So when I was in fourth grade we had spelling lists every week. On each day of the week we did something different to learn the words and on Fridays we would play bingo. I remember that during the week, working on spelling was something I enjoyed, not just because I was (and still am) a nerd and liked spelling but because my teacher would have a CD going in the background. The only one that I can remember was a couple of CD's that had recordings of Shel Silverstein reading some of the poetry from his books such as Where the Sidewalk Ends and Falling Up.

My mom had both of the books I mentioned above and I liked reading from them. When I heard the recordings of the author reading them it was even better than reading them to myself! If you haven't had the experience of hearing an author read what they wrote then you should definitely try to find a recording because they know how they wanted it to sound when they wrote it. The poems in the books Where the Sidewalk Ends and Falling Up are fun, silly poems for kids and anyone any age. I found a YouTube video that someone made that also included the voice recording of Shel Silverstein for his poem "The Crocodile's Toothache."





This is a fun poem especially when Shel reads it because he uses different voices and sings the poem. I never would have thought, before hearing this for the first time in fourth grade, that it would be sung. In my opinion it makes it easier to memorize because rather than just learning a bunch of lines, there's something that can help guide you better. I found that after listening to the recordings, I remember the poems much better, even the ones that weren't songs but had the rhythm and voice fluctuations that made them catchy enough that I ended up learning several of them.

I think that the animated cartoon that this person made to go with the poem is pretty fun as well. I always liked to imagine the characters and the imagery in poems and stories and such but I also like to see them from other people's perspectives. This cartoon gives us the cartoon's creator's view of what the dentist looked and what happened after he pulled out the crocodile's teeth.