Book excerpt: If I weren't me / What else would I be? It's a universal question that we all wrestle with, particularly as children. And it provides creative fodder for poetry teacher hal evans, who brings the sensibilities of Ogden Nash and Shel Silverstein, illuminated with zany mashups by illustrator Kevin Pope.Leading the reader through a poetic menagerie in which our narrator tries on different guises, evans puns and brays and marches his way through a language-arts funhouse, adopting stances ranging from droll to comical to clever.As they engage in evans? infectiously zany wordplay, kids respond in kind, blissfully unaware that they are absorbing poetic structure, form, and technique.