Rat for Lunch by Jack Prelutsky

Poetry with a refrain

"Rat for Lunch" by Jack Prelutsky from A Pizza the Size of the Sun, illustrated by James Stevenson, Greenwillow Books, New York, 1996.

Introduction: Display school cafeteria menu. Read the "main dishes". Ask students to indicate favorite dishes by a show of hands as your read the menus. Tell students to listen carefully to the poem for all the various ways RAT can be served for their dining pleasure.

Poem

Refrain:
Rat for lunch! Rat for lunch!
Yum! Delicious! Munch munch munch!
One by one or by the bunch--
Rat, or rat, oh rat for lunch!

Scrambled slug in salty slime
is our choice at breakfast time,
but for lunch, we say to you,
nothing but a rat will do.

Rat for lunch! Rat for lunch!
Yum! Delicious! Munch munch munch!
One by one or by the bunch--
Rat, oh rat, oh rat for lunch!

For our snack each afternoon,
we chew bits of baked baboon,
curried squirrel, buttered bat,
but for lunch it must be rat.

Rat for lunch! Rat for lunch!
Yum! Delicious! Munch munch munch!
One by one or by the bunch--
Rat, oh rat, oh rat for lunch!

In the evening we may dine
on fillet of porcupine,
buzzard gizzard, lizard chops,
but for lunch a rat is tops.

Rat for lunch! Rat for lunch!
Yum! Delicious! Munch munch munch!
One by one or by the bunch--
Rat, oh rat, oh rat for lunch!

Rat, we loved you steamed or stewed,
blackened, broiled, or barbecued.
Pickled, poached, or fried in fat,
there is nothing like a rat.

Rat for lunch! Rat for lunch!
Yum! Delicious! Munch munch munch!
One by one or by the bunch--
Rat, oh rat, oh rat for lunch!

Extension: Break students up into groups to read verses chorally. Have all students join in on chorus. Encourage students to find other poems with refrains to share and perform at other library visits.

This is by far one of my more favorite poems.