On Rhyme and Reason

This was an article I did for the May 2005 issue of www.KidMagWriters.com, one of my favorite sites for the published and aspiring children's writer. I thought I would share it here to give everyone an idea of why I love to write for kids!

On Rhyme and Rythm

Recently, I was invited to talk to a group of third and fourth grade students on the subject of rhythm and rhyme in poetry. This opportunity arose after several of their teachers had read some of my work. I was thrilled to say the least. I was going to spend an entire morning talking to kids about my favorite subject; words! After introductions, I decided to break the ice by reading a short piece of my work. The kids seemed a bit fidgety as I told them the title of what I would be reading, but by the end of the second line, they were tuning in, and by the third line, I knew by their big grins they were hooked. I completed reading the piece that totaled all of one-hundred-and-thirty-seven words to hands shooting up and questions and comments spilling forth.

Our discussion soon led to the comment that many of them thought that they would not enjoy the morning, as they were a bit old for picture book stories and rhyming poetry. Too old?

I led the discussion towards what many of those who write for children know, and what many readers, oftentimes the parents, subliminally know: A good picture book is timeless, appropriate for any age. In truth, many picture book stories are written not only for the proposed audience, the young child, but also with the proposed reader in mind, (the older child, or adult).

This took us to the next part of our morning. I thought I would ask the students if they knew what made up a story and if they thought they could and would want to write their own rhymed piece. Again, hands shot up and I quickly learned their teacher was more than adequately doing her job.

They informed me that every story, no matter how short, must have a beginning, middle, and end.

It has to tell a story.

I was told that when writing in rhyme, you should read it aloud lots. That is the only way to find out if it sounds like music. Rhythm is the second most important part of writing rhyme after the rhyme itself. After all, what is rhythm if not music?

Count syllables, and count the stressed syllables too!

One young person told me that when writing rhyme it is very important to use words in their right place. What? You have to make sure and not put a word in a spot just to make it match a word in a previous line just to get it to rhyme. I think that’s what we writers call a forced rhyme!

Then, they really surprised me when they said they learned through listening to their teacher read them a wide variety of stories, that one of the main things the whole class agreed upon, was that they dislike stories with too many words. At first, I was not sure what they meant. Was it long stories they disliked? No, no, no! They went on to make it very clear that they disliked words that just dragged the story out. Long stories were good. Short stories were good. Long sentences with words added just to make the sentence longer were, in their words, not mine, DUMB! I thought I understood, but I really wanted to make sure. I asked them if I could use an example from the story we just read to make sure I understood. They were becoming the teachers and I the student. What a great morning!

I grabbed a few sentences of what I had just read aloud to them, and wrote them across the blackboard:

Wind blows hard.

"Gale force!"
Yells crow to horse.
"Caaw, caaw!"

Then I rewrote it as this:

The wind blew very hard.

“It’s blowing at gale force!”
Crow yelled loudly
To the old gray horse.

"Caaw, caaw!"

I then asked them if that is what they meant by too many words. Yes! They unanimously voiced. One young man asked why someone would say that the wind was ‘blowing’ at gale force. They already read in the first line that the wind was blowing, and to top it off, gale force meant exactly the same thing. (It helped that they had just had a unit in science on wind!) In addition, why would the author have to say that the crow ‘loudly’ said Caaw, Caaw, when they already said he was yelling? I got it, I really did.

As young as they were, they knew that they did not need something over explained. If the writer already said something, why say it again?

The morning ended with visitor becoming student and students stepping into the position of writer and penning some very well versed rhyme. They learned that poetry is fun to both read and write, and that as readers who write, they would never be too old for picture books or poetry. What a mutually gratifying day!

Christina VanGinkel is a freelance writer and craft designer. She is hoping to break into the toughest market of all, picture books, and is currently busy creating new stories while searching out markets for her several finished manuscripts. The children that she visited in the article, along with two other classrooms, went on to turn her story, Moo Achoo!, into a theatrical production.