An online poem by Jessy Randall has an unusual presenter: a little kid with a British accent and enough stage presence to assure a successful theater career (even when she flubs her lines).
Randall’s poem, titled “My Friends,” is featured this month on the website Smories, which shows videos of children reading poems and very short stories written for kids.
Randall, the archivist and curator of special sections at Tutt Library, says she doesn’t usually write rhyming poems, but this one is an exception.
“I loved Cricket magazine when I was a kid, and my mom subscribed my daughter to Cricket’s little-sibling magazine, Ladybug, which has poems in it,” Randall says. She thought it would be fun to have a poem in Ladybug, and noticed they seemed to run short rhyming things.
“So I wrote a set of rhyming couplets that I thought Ladybug would eat up. Well, Ladybug didn’t care for them. They sat in my files for a long time.” Eventually, a friend sent Randall a link to Smories and she submitted her poem.
Randall, the author of several books of poetry, says “The key to the humor in the poem, for me, is making the rhyme be a little unexpected. So, if I were doing one for “Jane” I couldn’t rhyme it with “plain” – I’d have to think of something weirder, like maybe “drain.”
To watch the poem being performed, go to: http://www.smories.com/watch/my-friends/
“My Friends”
by Jessy Randall
I have a friend, her name is Claire
She likes to throw things in the air.
I have a friend, his name is Peter
His room could be a little neater.
I have a friend, her name is Kate
And she is always, ALWAYS late.
I have a friend, his name is Lance
Sometimes he does a funny dance.
I have a friend, her name is Janet
I think she’s from another planet.
