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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Judith Viorst
Judith Viorst
Judith Viorst was born in Newark, New Jersey, in 1931. She is the author of several works of fiction and nonfiction, for children as well as adults. Her most recent...
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FURTHER READING
Poems About Animals and Pets
27,000 Miles
by Albert Goldbarth
At the Zoo
by William Makepeace Thackeray
Bats
by Paisley Rekdal
Darwin's Finches
by Deborah Digges
Evening Hawk
by Robert Penn Warren
from Jubilate Agno, Fragment B, lines 695-768
by Christopher Smart
Leda and the Swan
by W. B. Yeats
Mole
by Wyatt Prunty
Nelson, My Dog
by Gary Soto
Ode on the death of a favorite cat
by Thomas Gray
Skunk Hour
by Robert Lowell
The Armadillo
by Elizabeth Bishop
The Bear
by Galway Kinnell
The Crocodile
by Lewis Carroll
The Eagle
by Lord Alfred Tennyson
The Kitten and The Falling Leaves
by William Wordsworth
The Moose
by Elizabeth Bishop
The Paper Nautilus
by Marianne Moore
The Return
by Frances Richey
The Tyger
by William Blake
Thing
by Rae Armantrout
Turn of a Year
by Joan Houlihan
Poems for Kids
At the Zoo
by William Makepeace Thackeray
Be Glad Your Nose is on Your Face
by Jack Prelutsky
Bleezer's Ice Cream
by Jack Prelutsky
Dream Variations
by Langston Hughes
I felt a Funeral, in my Brain (280)
by Emily Dickinson
Jabberwocky
by Lewis Carroll
maggie and milly and molly and may
by E. E. Cummings
Mary's Lamb
by Sarah Josepha Hale
Mr. Grumpledump's Song
by Shel Silverstein
My Shadow
by Robert Louis Stevenson
Sick
by Shel Silverstein
Since Hannah Moved Away
by Judith Viorst
The Crocodile
by Lewis Carroll
The Eagle
by Lord Alfred Tennyson
The Land of Counterpane
by Robert Louis Stevenson
The Raven
by Edgar Allan Poe
The Tyger
by William Blake
We never know how high we are (1176)
by Emily Dickinson
Wynken, Blynken, and Nod
by Eugene Field
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Mother Doesn't Want a Dog  
by Judith Viorst

Mother doesn't want a dog.
Mother says they smell,
And never sit when you say sit,
Or even when you yell.
And when you come home late at night
And there is ice and snow,
You have to go back out because
The dumb dog has to go.

Mother doesn't want a dog.
Mother says they shed,
And always let the strangers in
And bark at friends instead,
And do disgraceful things on rugs,
And track mud on the floor,
And flop upon your bed at night
And snore their doggy snore.

Mother doesn't want a dog.
She's making a mistake.
Because, more than a dog, I think
She will not want this snake.



From If I Were in Charge of the World and Other Worries . . ., published by Macmillan, 1981. Used with permission.
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