“Ickle Me, Pickle Me, Tickle Me too,” by Shel Silverstein, follows three friends on their journey in a shoe and how they will drop everything for a great adventure.
In stanza one, the three friends come together and fly away in a shoe. You can see by their exclamations, “Hooray!” and “What Fun,” that they are pretty excited to go on an adventure no matter where it takes them.
In the second stanza, we learn that each of them has their own job and working together is the only way to get things done. Without a captain, like Ickle, they would not know where to go. If Pickle weren’t the crew they may have some malfunctions and would not stay in the air very long. Lastly, if Tickle didn’t serve food they would not survive very long.
In stanza 3,
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Shel Silverstein named them, Ickle, Pickle, and Tickle, which all end in that “ickle” sound. This adds a kind of rhythm and voice to the poem and helps the reader read it in the way that Silverstein would have read it. Kind of choppy and accented on the “ickle” part. He also uses rhyming throughout the poem by rhyming different words with the word “too.” For example, “too” and “shoe” and “flew” and “stew” and “blue” and “do” and “knew.” This helps the poem by drawing it all together and making it seem like one whole poem rather than a bunch of different stanzas haphazardly set together.
Secondly, Shel Silverstein uses repetition to draw his poem together into one complete piece. For instance, he repeats, “Ickle Me, Pickle Me, Tickle Me too,” at the end of every stanza. This kind of wraps up the stanza before beginning the next one. He also repeats “higher” three times in stanza two. This gives the poem that over-the-top feeling that makes it seem magical.
Lastly, he uses rhythm to give the reader an easier way to read the poem, as well as much needed structure. Each of his stanzas are written with the lines in a pattern of, long, long, short, short, short, long. This helps the poem because it structures each of the stanzas to make them read the same and draws the whole thing together into one conclusive