Excerpt from book:

Chapter 1

A is for apple

See the nice green apple.

M-M-M-M-Good.

How many nice green apples can you eat?

Make a circle around the number of nice green little apples you ate today.

1 2 3 4 7 12 26 38 57 83 91 116

B is for baby

See the baby

The baby is fat

The baby is pink

The baby can cry

The baby can laugh

See the baby play

Play, baby, play.

Pretty, pretty, baby.

Mommy loves the baby more than she loves you.

Z is for zoo

Let's go to the zoo

See all the animals!

The animals are locked inside the cages.

Poor animals!

Who will let them out???

See the elephant in the zoo. Give the nice elephant some peanut shells with pepper inside. That will be a good joke on him. Ha. Ha. Ha Ha. The elephant is mad but don't worry -- By tomorrow the elephant will have forgotten all about it.

Poor hippopotomus. The hippopotumos has a bone stuck in his throat and can't get it out. Poor hipopothomus the hipopottomos has no fingers like you do. Poor hipotopomus. Say, maybe he is not a real hiptopomos after all. Maybe he is really a royal prince that has been turned into a hipopotomos by a wicked witch and when some person takes the bone out of his throat the spell will be broken and he will turn back into a prince again and give whoever did it a million dollars in gold and a horse and a castle.

See the hippopotimus in the zoo

Whew!

Copyright © 1961 by Shel Silverstein