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If you have a moment, let me tell you a story… Once upon a time there was a little boy who loved to read but hated to write. He loved Dr. Seuss and Roald Dahl and anything funny that rhymed. But still, he hated to write. He didn’t know that authors were actual people, and he didn’t know that writing would become easier with practice.

At the age of 15, he discovered computers and forgot all about the funny, rhyming poems. At 24, he got his first job programming computers. At 29, he started writing articles for computer magazines and overcame his fear of writing.

When he was 32 years old, he discovered a recording of Shel Silverstein reciting “Sarah Cynthia Sylvia Stout Would Not Take the Garbage Out” and his love of poetry was instantly rekindled. No longer afraid of writing, he decided to create a poem of his own called “Scrawny Tawny Skinner.”

Three years, and several dozen poems later, using his programming skills, he built a website to share his poems with the world. He called it poetry4kids.com.

That boy was me.

Since 1997 I have been sharing my poems with students and teachers around the world. It is my full-time job, my hobby, my all-consuming passion, to get students excited about reading, and to show them that writing is easier than they think.

So far, I have posted more than 800 poems, along with dozens of writing lessons, audio recordings, and videos, and I make them all available to you for free.

If you are finding the poems, lessons, and other resources on poetry4kids useful for your students, please consider buying me a cup of coffee. I do seriously drink a half-pot of coffee (AKA writing fuel) or more to start every day. I greatly appreciate your generous donation; it really does make a difference and helps make creating resources for you even more fun.

Even if you can’t buy me a coffee, know that I’m doing this for you and the young people in your life, so they can have as much fun with reading as I did as a kid, and to show them that they can be writers too.

With warmest thanks,

Kenn Nesbitt