The Animal Store

By Rachel Field 1894–1942 Rachel Field

If I had a hundred dollars to spend,

Or maybe a little more,

I’d hurry as fast as my legs would go

Straight to the animal store.

I wouldn’t say, “How much for this or that?”

“What kind of a dog is he?”

I’d buy as many as rolled an eye,

Or wagged a tail at me!

I’d take the hound with the drooping ears

That sits by himself alone;

Cockers and Cairns and wobbly pups

For to be my very own.

I might buy a parrot all red and green,

And the monkey I saw before,

If I had a hundred dollars to spend,

Or maybe a little more.

Rachel Field, "The Animal Store" from Taxis and Toadstools. Copyright © 1926 by Doubleday, a division of Random House, Inc. Used by permission of Doubleday, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Random House, Inc.

Source: The Golden Book of Poetry (1947)

Biography

Novelist, poet, and children’s author Rachel Field was born in New York and attended Radcliffe College. Field’s novels for adults include Time Out of Mind (1935) and All This and Heaven Too (1938), which was turned into a movie starring Bette Davis and Charles Boyer. She is the author of Fear Is the Thorn (1936) as well as several poetry collections for children, including Taxis and Toadstools (1926), An Alphabet for Boys and . . .

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