For most children, poetry is the first literary genre they remember. Nursery rhymes are learned on their parents’ knees, “Pat-a-cake, pat-a-cake, baker’s man,/ Bake me a cake as fast as you can.” Rhyme and language learning go hand-in-hand. It is no wonder then that most children know several nursery rhymes before starting school.

In this chapter, there is a broad selection of poetry—divine songs, nursery rhymes, narrative poems, lyric poems,  and nonsense verse. The selection aims to provide a brief historical overview of poetry for a child audience. Poetry falls roughly into two categories: lyric and narrative. Lyric poems are those that offer a look at a variety of subjects (emotions, nature, objects, and the like) without telling a story, and narrative poems are those that tell a story. Narrative poems have beginnings, middles, and endings, as do works of fiction.

Even though verse and/or poetry is learned early, many children claim not to like poetry. According to  Kathleen Horning in From Cover to Cover, “In all likelihood what [children] dislike is the study of poetry…Many adults themselves have unpleasant memories of being forced to dissect a poem to analyze its meaning, and they have come to associate this unpleasantness with poetry in general…poetry need not be picked apart to be understood and appreciated. Poems speak to children through sound, images, and ideas” (68). Exposure to a variety of poems and poets without the expectation of finding meaning will allow readers to discover the beauty of poetry.

Archibald MacLeish wrote in “Ars Poetica” that “A poem should not mean. But be” [editors’ emphasis]. Our experience with poetry is personal. What a poem means to one of us, it does not mean to someone else. Does this mean that poems are about nothing and waiting for us to fill in the meaning?  No, it does not. But it does mean that the images, sounds, word choice, metaphors, similes, pacing, tone and other elements of a poem conjure an emotional, cognitive, and sensory response from each reader or listener.

This chapter contains examples of early poems for children. Some of these poems illustrate a harsh attitude toward children and their behavior. Isaac Watts’s Divine Songs Attempted in the Easy Language of Children express a typically puritanical attitude: good children will be rewarded with heaven and bad children will suffer the pains of hell. Because of their harshness, many of Watts’s poems would not be suitable for a child audience today, yet they are historically significant. Hoffman’s Struuwelpeter, published in 1848, is a collection of didactic poems pointing to the dangers of playing with matches, being a fussy eater, sucking one’s thumb, and other bad behaviors that are met with severe consequences. In the mid to late nineteenth century, fiction writers, such as Charlotte Bronte and Mark Twain, questioned these puritanical attitudes toward children. Bronte shows in Jane Eyre that a gentle, yet firm hand gains the respect and trust of children. Twain’s characters are not innocent children, nor are they the embodiment of evil; instead, they are children who misbehave and exhibit inquisitive natures. They live in a world where children are not perfect, and neither are the adults. When Tom Sawyer misbehaves, he is punished, but he recovers to experience one more adventure, unlike Hoffman’s subjects.

Early poetry for children is traditional in its form and structure. The reader will recognize end rhymes and a meter or beat that is the mark of traditional poetic forms. Two sisters writing for young readers, Anne Taylor Gilbert and Jane Taylor, in Original Poems for Infant Minds (1804-1805) and Rhymes for the Nursery (1806), offered children a mix of cautionary poems and lyrical verse, a few of which are in this chapter, including the well-known “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.” Their poems move away from the purely preachy and cautionary to poetry that touches on experiences and events in children’s lives.

Many children’s poets have appealed to a child’s sense of humor. Nonsense poetry has a long-honored place among poetry for children. These poems defy meaning. Victorian poet Edward Lear specialized in creating light verse. His work is silly word play as seen in one of his limericks:

There was an old man of Dumbree,
Who taught little owls to drink tea;
For he said, “To eat mice is not proper or nice,”
That amiable man of Dumbree.

Lewis Carroll and others embraced the nonsense poem and set the stage for late twentieth century children’s poets—namely Shel Silverstein and Jack Prelutsky–who also brought humor and silliness to their audience.

While some young readers may express a dislike of the lyric or concept poem, the narrative has retained its popularity among children. The narrative poem tells a story. The focus may be one central figure or an event. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s “The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere” and “Evangeline,” and Vincent Benet’s “Peregrine White and Virginia Dare” are classic examples of narrative poems for children. Some narrative poems have been successfully adapted to the picture book format.

Today’s readers will find many books for children and YA in the form of verse novels. Verse novels are those narratives that appear on the page as poetry (i.e. short lines, sparse description, fragmented ideas). Verse novels tell a story in a condensed format that appeals to readers who may be intimidated by a traditional novel with full pages of text. The white space in verse novels means a faster read for those with difficulty reading. Verse novels can be found in all genres (contemporary realistic fiction, historical fiction, fantasy, and the rest).

Kathleen Horning advises that,

When we evaluate children’s poetry, we need to consider the quality of the poetry itself by thinking about how it sounds, what it says, and how it says it. Read poetry aloud. A good poem sounds natural, even if it rhymes. Look at the words that have been used to compose the poem. Do they seem unchangeable? What kinds of specific and implied comparisons has the poet made? How has imagery been used? Think about the idea presented in the poem. Does it show a fresh view of something with which a child is likely to be familiar? Does it appeal to the mind through the senses? Does it leave a lingering image in the mind of the reader? (74)

Horning’s questions are important for readers of poetry, in addition to those selecting poetry for children.

For further reading, poetry and verse novels by:

•           Kwame Alexander
•           Sharon Creech
•           Paul Fleischman
•           Douglas Florian
•           Nikki Grimes
•           Pat Mora
•           Naomi Shihab Nye
•           Jack Prelutsky
•           Shel Silverstein
•           Jacqueline Woodson

References:

Demers, Patricia, editor. From Instruction to Delight: An Anthology of Children’s Literature to 1850.     4th edition, Oxford, 2015.

Horning, Kathleen. From Cover to Cover: Evaluating and Reviewing Children’s Books. Revised edition. Collins, 2010.