Gooney Bird Is So Absurd Read Online Free

talkative member of the class.
    From the front of the room, she asked the teacher a question. "Doeth it have to have 'Couplet' ath a title? Becauth I have a different title."
    "Oh my, no," Mrs. Pidgeon told her. "You are the complete ruler of the title. Whatever you want it to be."
    "Good," Felicia Ann replied. "My title ith 'Neethe.'"
    "Neethe?" asked Beanie. "What's that?"
    "Let's wait and see," Mrs. Pidgeon suggested. "Go ahead, Felicia Ann."
    Felicia Ann took a deep breath. Her face was pink with excitement. She looked at her paper and read:
Neethe
by Felithia Ann
Thuthan ith my little neethe.
She doethn't yet have any teeth.
    Everyone was silent for a moment as if translating a foreign language. Then they got it, one by one.
    "Her niece!"
    "Remember Felicia Ann's big sister had a baby?"
    "It's Susan! That's her niece's name!"
    "Right!" said Felicia Ann. "Thuthan!" She beamed with pride while the class applauded her couplet. Then she sat down.
    "Time for maybe two more," Mrs. Pidgeon said. She looked around. "Malcolm. Your turn."
    Malcolm bounded to the front of the room. His shoes were untied, his shirt buttons were in the wrong holes, and there were Magic Marker stains all over his hands.
    His paper was crumpled, but he smoothed it out and read in a loud voice:
Triplets
by Malcolm
Some people have siblings and some not any.
I have three. That's two too many.
    The class laughed and clapped, and Malcolm folded his paper into an airplane and sailed it across the room. It missed the hamster cage and rested on a stack of National Geographies.
    "Sometimes poetry is a good way of explaining our feelings, isn't it?" Mrs. Pidgeon a said. "Thank you, Malcolm. Good work. Now: who's next? Last one today!"
    "I'll go," Gooney Bird announced. She stood. Today, in addition to her brain-warming hat and her fingerless gloves, the ones that she said warmed and invigorated her writing hands, she was also wearing a fur collar at the neck of her sweatshirt. The left leg of her jeans was rolled up to her knee so that her striped knee sock showed above her bunny slipper.
    "My poem tells my feelings, too," she said, "and it's a shortie, so I memorized it and I don't need to read it from the paper. But..." Gooney Bird looked around. "Could some of you come up and stand here with me while I say it?"
    "Why?" asked Chelsea. "Are you scared?"
    "I am never scared," Gooney Bird replied.
    "Embarrathed?" asked Felicia Ann.
    "I am never embarrassed," Gooney Bird said.
    "Why do you need us, then?" asked Keiko.
    "Because you are part of my poem. Sometimes a poem is more than just words."
    "Well, I'll be a part of Gooney Bird's poem," Mrs. Pidgeon announced. "It would be an honor." She went and stood beside Gooney Bird at the front of the room.
    "Me, too!" said Beanie.
    "And me!"
    "I want to, too!"
    One by one the children got up from their desks and went to stand in increasingly long lines on both sides of Gooney Bird Greene. The lines made their way around the border of the room, past the hamster cage, past the art display, past the large calendar on the wall.
    "We're a thircle!" Felicia Ann pointed out.
    "Now," Gooney Bird instructed, "hold hands, everyone!"
    She removed her fingerless gloves and took the hand of Mrs. Pidgeon on one side and Malcolm on the other. Around the circle every child reached out and held hands on both a sides.
    Gooney Bird looked around. "Okay," she said, when they were all arranged. "Here's my poem." In a firm, clear voice, she recited:
Child
by Gooney Bird Greene
I'm an only.
But not lonely.

4.
    "You promised funny today, Mrs. Pidgeon! You said we could do funny poems!" Ben said.
    "I did indeed," Mrs. Pidgeon told the class. "Humorous poems today." She went to the board and wrote a word: LIMERICK.
    Just then there was a knock on the classroom door. It opened, and Mr. Leroy, the principal, came in. Today he was wearing his chess-game tie, with little knights and pawns and other chess pieces on it in a pattern. "Just