Falling Up

Falling up is a children's poetry collection book, written and illustrated by Shel Silverstein and published in 1996. The book features 144 poems and is dedicated to the authors son Mathew. The illustrations in the book are simple, life like, and black and white. 

My favorite poem in the collection has to People Zoo. The poem is about a little kid, who goes to the zoo and while he is there the animals lock him up in the people zoo. He's in a small cage, fed bread and tea, all the animals gather to watch him, and they point, giggle or scream at him. And at the end of the poem, he tells you that if you go to the zoo, don't act like a person, act like an animal or they will lock you up in the people zoo too. I believe that the author is trying to tell us that the animals aren't always happy with their living conditions at the zoo and we need to treat them will respect because we would not want to be in their position.





Some poems featured in this book are: 

• Advice
• Carrots
• Christmas Dog
• Crazy Dream
• Hand Holding
• Hard to Please
• Long Scarf
• Mummy
• New World
• People Zoo
• Snowball
• Sun Hat
• Turkey?
• Unfair
• Yuck 

 Discussion Questions:

• Do you like going to the zoo?
• Do you think the animals enjoy living in the zoo, why or why not?
• Why do you think Silverstein chose to you basic black and white illustrations?
•  How long do you think it took Silverstein to write all 144 poems in the collection?
• Why do you think the animals locked the little boy up?
• Do you agree with what the animals did?

Motivation Activity:

• Take the students on a field trip to the zoo or next time their at the zoo with their family, give the students the task of doing everything the little boy said not to do and see how the animals react. Have the students take lots of pictures and turn their experience into a poem to share with the class.