Science Verse

"Amoeba" Don't ever tease a wee amoeba By calling him a her amoeba. And don't call her a him amoeba. Or never he a she amoeba. 'Cause whether his or hers amoeba, They too feel like you and meba.

What if a boring lesson about the food chain becomes a sing-aloud celebration about predators and prey? A twinkle-twinkle little star transforms into a twinkle-less, sunshine-eating-and rhyming Black Hole? What if amoebas, combustion, metamorphosis, viruses, the creation of the universe are all irresistible, laugh-out-loud poetry? Well, you're thinking in science verse, that's what. And if you can't stop the rhymes . . . the atomic joke is on you. Only the amazing talents of Jon Scieszka and Lane Smith, the team who created Math Curse, could make science so much fun.

Winner of Parents Choice Award (Fall) (1998-2007) (Gold) 2004
Short-listed for Dorothy Canfield Fisher Children's Book Award 2006
Short-listed for Connecticut Book Awards (Children's Illustration) 2005
Short-listed for Beehive Awards (Poetry) 2007
Short-listed for Buckaroo Book Award 2005
Short-listed for Louisiana Young Readers' Choice Award (Grades 3-5) 2007
Short-listed for Rhode Island Children's Book Awards 2006

“"Clever and often droll, the verse ably juggles facts, meter, and rhyme schemes and usually reflects a student's point of view: grossed out by the human body, bored by yet another year of dinosaur study, more concerned about writing down the right answer than getting at the truth….A beautifully designed book-intelligent, irreverent, inviting, and downright irresistible."- Booklist , starred review”

"Clever and often droll, the verse ably juggles facts, meter, and rhyme schemes and usually reflects a student's point of view: grossed out by the human body, bored by yet another year of dinosaur study, more concerned about writing down the right answer than getting at the truth....A beautifully designed book--intelligent, irreverent, inviting, and downright irresistible."--Booklist, starred review

In college, Jon Scieszka was on course to become a doctor, but spent his spare time attempting to write the Great American Novel. He decided to shelve his medical ambitions and take a masters degree in Fiction Writing at Columbia University. Afterwards, he became a teacher in New York. Fans of Scieszka will not be surprised that he was a somewhat unorthodox teacher, who introduced his eight-year-old students to Kafka's Metamorphosis ("They loved it. You'd tell them about this guy who turns into a cockroach, and they'd go, 'No way, man, no way.'") Scieszka's teaching experience prompted him to try writing for children, viewing his new readers as "the same smart people I had been trying to reach... just a little shorter." In 1988, Jon took a year off from teaching and swapped material with the illustrator Lane Smith. The result of this collaboration was The True Story of the 3 Little Pigs!. The book was initially rejected by publishers on the grounds that it was too weird/sophisticated. But it was not long before the book made it into print. A decade after its first publication, the book has sold over 4 million copies, been translated into ten languages and been widely acclaimed as a classic picture book for all ages. The next Scieszka/Smith collaboration The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales goes even further to break all th

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