Harry Hooker
Harry Hooker had a book
And couldn’t find a teacher.
But still he managed very well,
He climbed a box and rang a bell
And turned into a preacher.
Illustration by Blanche Fisher Wright
First published in The Peter Patter Book of Nursery Rhymes (1918).
The rhyme captures that childhood instinct to imitate adults with great seriousness — even when you have no idea what they’re actually doing. You can almost hear his sermon: solemn, grand, and completely made up. Like so many of Wright’s poems, it finds its humor in earnest play — a world where imagination fills in for experience and every box becomes a pulpit.
