If you had the chance to meet your favorite author/celebrity what do you think would be the first thing you relate with them on?
For Scholastic News Kids Press Corps reporter Jeremy Hsiao it was having smelly feet. At last months’ Nickelodeon Kids Choice Awards at the Forum in Inglewood, California Jeremy got to tell Nick just that as he talked to him about his brand new poetry book.
Check out Jeremy’s encounter below:
“FUNKY FEET”
I got a chance to ask Cannon about his new book, Neon Aliens Ate My Homework and Other Poems(Scholastic, 2015). I told him that I could relate to his poem “Funky Feet,” because my mom always tells me that I have smelly feet. The poem begins with these lines:
Oooh-weee?
Do you smell that?
It can’t be.
Is it the cat?
“That poem,” Cannon said, “is also about my mom telling me that I have really funky feet. We actually are bonding on that level right now. Everything I wrote is really personal. I thought a lot of young people could relate to it.”
A SHARED LOVE OF POETRY
After telling Cannon that I recently won two awards for my own poetry, I asked if he thought I could be just like him someday.
“You’re going to become better than me,” he said. “When I was your age, I didn’t win any writing awards. You’re already on your way. You’re out here interviewing people. You’re out here writing and being creative.”
Did Cannon ever imagine as a kid that he would write a poetry book as an adult? “I always wanted to because poet Shel Silverstein was one of the people I looked up to,” he said. “I thought, ‘One day, I want to be able to do something like that,’ and I got the opportunity.”
Now that National Poetry Month is here, Cannon recommends these three Silverstein books: Where the Sidewalk Ends, A Light in the Attic, and The Giving Tree. And don’t forget to check out Neon Aliens Ate my Homework and Other Poems.
