The D- Poems of Jeremy Bloom
A Collection of Poems About School, Homework, and Life (sort of)

Was ever there a sadder fate
Than that of Jeremy? But wait …
Perhaps this tale you do not know
Of how the lad did have to go
To school one day, and there select
Semester classes and elect-
Ives that he wished to study there
While sitting in some wooden chair.

An easy class was what he'd take,
To sit and rest, for goodness sake,
No homework, and no horrid test,
That type of class would be the best;
One did exist, it made him clap,
The easy course of music ap-
Preciation, "Snooze Patrol."
The class was great, the nickname droll.

On registration day he slept
Overlate; at school he wept
To learn that "Snooze Patrol" was filled
His bones then to his marrow chilled
When pottery, his second choice,
Seemed on the form, "Hooray," his voice
Rang out as he just failed to see
Not pottery, but poetry.

The teacher seemed to hate him and
Frequently did reprimand;
The marks she gave invariably
Somewhere close to minus D.
So now he suffers, that poor fool,
For daring to be late to school;
Henceforth I do not hesitate …
There never was a sadder fate!

From the book:

If you call somebody Ms. Pterodactyl enough times in your mind, eventually it comes out your mouth.
That was how the Pterodactyl Period began exactly eight minutes into the first day of Ms. Terranova's Poetry class. Jeremy was trying to say, "Ms. Terranova, I don't belong in this class."
But it came out, "Ms. Pteradactyl --"
That was all it took. The other students howled with laughter. By the end of the day, the whole school knew about it, and Ms. Terranova couldn't take three steps without hearing someone from behind a door, yelling, "Heads up! It's a pterodactyl!"
It was written in Magic Marker on her classroom door. Someone slipped a small box of reptile food from the local pet shop into her mailbox in the office. And at four o'clock, when she headed to the parking lot after a harrowing day, there it was, written in the dirt on the side of her car:

It was amazing how many sixth graders knew how to spell pterodactyl.
Ms. Terranova never actually blamed Jeremy for starting the new nickname. So it's anybody's guess if this had anything to do with her grading of his work. The poems of the Pterodactyl Period, the earliest of the five periods of Jeremy Bloom's poetic career, received a D minus. In fact, on the first monthly progress report, Ms. Terranova wrote: The only thing that kept Jeremy from getting an F was the fact that he spelled his name right
Was this the bitterness of a woman with giant dinosaur wings pinned to her coat? Or was Jeremy Bloom really a D minus poet? The reader must decide.

Copyright © 1992 Gordon Korman and Bernice Korman used by permission

The first of two poetic collaborations between Gordon and his mother, the D- Poems are a fun read, and it is obvious the two of them had a lot of fun writing it. Though I wouldn't have thought Jeremy was that good of a poet (but very funny, which is what matters when reading a Korman title) I've even heard of teachers using the title in poetry courses.