Thursday, June 15, 2006

Writing Poetry for Kids. It's harder than you think.

Poetry for children

Writing poetry for children is something most editors – and even other writers – tell you NOT to do.

Editors aren’t looking for poetry, they warn.

Children’s poetry is too difficult to write, they exhort.

They’re right. It IS difficult to write.

Yet so many of us try. Why? Because it’s fun, because ultimately, children love it (the poetry section of Inkless Tales is one of the hardest hit) and because when it’s done right, it’s delightful. Poetry is necessary to our souls.

There are several reasons why this is so. For one reason, many of us feel it must rhyme. This is not true. There are many very good children’s poems that do not rhyme. For those of us who want to teach children to write their own poems, one excellent form of non-rhyming poetry to begin with is the haiku.

This three-line form, which follows a strict form of five syllables in the first line, seven syllables in the second line, and five syllables in the last line, concentrates on evoking a description, or a moment. It’s a beautiful exercise.

Oddly enough, the strictness of its form can release enormous creativity in children. I find it works much better than the typical acrostic poems that many teachers work with.

Another type of non-rhyming poem teachers and other educators (parents, try this at home – poetry is meant to be used!) may wish to try is what’s commonly called a “sense poem” – try choosing a subject and describing it, line by line, via the senses.

Here’s one I’ll throw off the top of my head for an example, about my dog, Tucker:


Black like the board at school
Soft like the lining of my coat
His bark is sharp, sharp, sharp
He sits if he sees a hot dog
And he fills the house and my heart
With the smell of wet dog
When it rains.

(You can tell here that I’m pretty crazy about my dog, a German Shepherd/Lab mix we adopted from the pound.)

So you see there is more than one way to write a poem than to rhyme it.

But what gets people in trouble, generally, is the rhyming – and not so much the rhyming.

People can rhyme.

What they can’t seem to manage to “get” is the meter.

That’s where it all seems to go horribly wrong for them. And what editors, readers, and their friends who say – “Oh, it’s so great” can’t seem to explain. Because what happens so many times is these writers are READING their poem to their friends, and they can unconsciously correct the problematic meter while reading the poem aloud.

More on this in the next post. But I’ll tell you then how I teach kids meter – and they get it when adults sometimes can’t.

Wednesday, June 14, 2006

Writing for children: Brevity

“If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter.”
– Blaise Pascal


Children’s literature is hard to write, despite the abundance of it, both published and unpublished.

Why IS it so hard to write, though? When it seems so, well, easy to read?

Having taught journalism, I see many of the same principles apply to writing for children. While one wants to choose one’s words carefully in ANY writing, precision, brevity and clarity happen to be particularly important here.

In a newspaper article, you have only seconds to grab the reader’s attention before he licks his thumb and turns the page. Children’s books simply won’t get read. (We’re not talking about getting published here – we’re talking about a good book.)

In journalism, you must be clear, above all. You must pack as much information – as interestingly as possible – into as short a space as you can.

In a picture book, a writer is challenged to use few, brilliantly chosen words. Jennifer Armstrong, a picture book writing teacher of mine in Vermont one summer, put it perfectly: the more you can compress your writing, the more powerful it becomes: tight and ready to bounce, like a rubber ball.

The famous editor Richard Jackson has a favorite saying: “Kill your darlings.”

If you have a line or two in your writing you MUST leave in, take it out.

Why?

You’re not paying enough attention to the work as a whole.

Learn to edit yourself. Get rid of anything you don’t need.

Embrace Strunk and White’s most valuable tool for any writer:

OMIT NEEDLESS WORDS. Words are powerful. Use them with care.

For instance: Now that I’m done this post, I’m going to go back and edit it. Word count for this first draft: 393.

Edited down to: 297. (That’s right. I lost 100 words.)

Tuesday, June 06, 2006

From the new Editor Page on the newly redesigned Inkless Tales web site:

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When I first wrote this page, InklessTales was just starting up, and it was all about reading, writing and drawing.

Now it's expanding into math and music, two of my other loves, with the Mathematical Mother Goose, What's My Number, and Inkless Tunes.

My hope is still that you'll love the stories, pictures, movies and other materials you find here. Still, that you'll leave the site and head to a bookstore — or better yet, you'll go out to one of your local independent booksellers, or to your local library — and get a pile of books to take home and share with a child.

Or, now, that you'll bang a pot or a pan and play drums, or enjoy an instrument or a sing-a-long. Music is great -- and builds the mathematical AND linguistical side of a child's brain.

Read, sing, do numbers.

I can sew without a pattern. My friends are amazed by this; I am not. I took my daughters for a tour at the Museum of the Fashion Institute of Technology recently in New York City. Turns out MOST people could sew without a pattern back in the old days. It was a skill, not a talent.

People are impressed by what I can do: I can draw, I can write, I can sing and play instruments.

Mostly, I can because my mother told me I could: which meant I always tried.

If nothing else -- I'd like this site to be about showing kids if you try, you probably can.

Put two chairs next to the monitor. Then switch it off and write your own stories, and draw your own pictures. Sing your own songs. You'll love it, I promise.

Getting you together to create and enjoy literature, pictures and puzzles is what this project is all about. Whether you're a teacher, a student, or a parent, I hope you'll find something inspiring here.