Calef Brown’s “The Doublenose Hotel”

Reminder: PoetryTagTime is the first ever electronic-only poetry anthology of new poems by top poets for children. You can purchase the book for 99 cents at Amazon and read it on your Kindle or through the downloadable Kindle platform for your computer, cell phone, etc.

Previously: Carole Boston Weatherford

Next up: CALEF BROWN

Setting the Stage: Ask the kids if any of them have ever stayed in a hotel or motel before. What was that experience like? Did they ever try room service?

Poetry Performance: Just for fun try reading Calef Brown’s poem, “The Doublenose Hotel,” with kids chiming in on all the smell-related words and phrases (highlight them in yellow to guide them). This includes: sense of smell, Doublenose Hotel, nasal buffet, rare perfumes, aroma service, order an odor, essence of mint, exotic flower, sweetly scented, “fragrancy,” smells so swell, and the Doublenose Hotel. The teacher or librarian reads the rest of the words and lines. Now try it faster and faster—it’s almost a tongue twister.

Just for Fun: This poem really focuses on the sense of smell. If possible, bring in a variety of scents for the kids to smell (e.g., mint, a flower, perfume) and make a list of descriptive “smell” words. Invite the kids to draw a face with a “doublenose”—what could that look like? Discuss what extra smells you might smell with a doublenose.

Poem Links: Here are key words that connect this poem with other poems in the PoetryTagTime collection:
Humor
Smells
Questions
Food
Flowers
Home

Buy the book now, so you can share each poem along with the ideas and activities that follow here.

Next up for PoetryTagTime: Rebecca Kai Dotlich


Posting (not poem) by Sylvia M. Vardell © 2011. All rights reserved.