Reading Poems With Children
I stopped at the grocery store on my way home from work, just before 8 PM - right when Garrison Keillor’s Writer’s Almanac airs on my local NPR station. So I turned off the engine, and listened to a poem.
Although my mind had been filled with the stress of the day, listening to the poem, I left my mind behind. Sitting in my car in the grocery store parking lot at 8 PM on a Wednesday night, I was at peace.
Do you remember a poetry book you had as a child? I had a magical one, an illustrated edition of Robert Louis Stevenson’s A Child’s Garden of Verses. The best part was the full-page glossy color plates. There weren’t too many, but I remember each one. . . the brown/tan tones of the seaside, children squatting in the sand with colorful pails and shovels . . . a child pumping his legs straight out on a tree swing, the landscape tiny below . . . a child climbing the stairs with a candle, and an enormous goblin-like shadow on the wall.
And I remember the poems. I heard them over and over, and many I still know by heart. Their rhythms and rhymes organized my brain and body into a delivery system for wonder and beauty. Every time I hear a poem begin, I re-enter that excitement.
When my son was still at the “read aloud” stage (which lasted up until junior high), I found that children’s poems were a sure win. They’re short, so if one doesn’t please, you can move on. There are tons of funny ones (he particularly loved one about Colonel Fazackerly Butterworth-Toast, who bought an old castle complete with a ghost . . . )
Reading poems aloud is a perfect improvisation opportunity – you can always plug in a child’s name somewhere, or start free-associating on the events of your own day, or riffing on nonsense words. As kids get older, you can formalize the process, and actually write poems based on the rhythms and rhyme schemes they have heard over and over again. For example, the year my son was nine, we decided to write about his new puppy. We took a Robert Louis Stevenson poem as a model:
At The Seaside
When I was down beside the sea.
A wooden spade they gave to me
To dig the sandy shore.
My holes were empty like a cup
In every hole the sea came up
Till it could come no more.
My son wrote his own version. Of course he needed some direction. I asked some questions about what his puppy liked to do. I asked him to suss out the pattern of the rhymes. We tossed a ball back and forth as we recited the lines to feel the rhythm. And eventually, he came up with his own version.
My Little Puppy
My little puppy’s very sweet
He really really likes to eat
And jump and run and play.
He tugs and tugs with all his might
He loves to lick and chew and bite
And sit in my lap all day.
There are lots of good poetry collections of children's poems. The one we read aloud the most was The Random House Book of Poetry for Children, selected by Jack Prelutsky and illustrated by Arnold Lobel.
If you click on the book cover that appears in this link, you can flip through and read the table of contents. The poems are grouped in topical sections: The Ways of Living Things, I’m Hungry! and People I Know. Colonel Fazackerly can be found Where Goblins Dwell.
I just asked my sixteen year-old son if he remembered that poem. “Yeah,” he said. “I memorized it.” Then he started looking for it in his bookcase.
Maybe in forty years, he’ll be sitting in a grocery store parking lot with the radio on, listening to a poem.
Comments
Thanks for the link, Rick! It’s nice to know that there are other children’s poetry fans out there . . .
My mother read to me out of that book when I was a child and I loved the pictures too! I was very excited to find a new one that wasn’t tattered, (as the one I inherited at my parents’ deaths is now). It has all the same pictures. I am delighted to have both the old (with some pages missing) and the new (with no pages missing). I had a great 3rd grade teacher who read us poetry too. Aren’t we lucky (and aren’t we responsible to pass it on)?!
Rick Townsend Watertown Apr 10, 2012
What a delightful article, Eve. I love your direction to “suss out” the pattern of the rhythms.
Stevenson’s “Child’s Garden” is a delight. Readers can sample all the pages by going to this Amazon site and selecting “Click to look inside…”
A Child's Garden of Verses
Thank you for a magical few moments.