Sasha The Cat

Writing in Rhyme (is a lot trickier than you might think!)

This spring, Lin-Manuel Miranda of Hamilton fame set the children’s Twitterverse on fire with a casual tweet about how bad he thought most rhyming picture books were. Aside from Seuss and Boynton, he hadn’t read many he liked. His complaint was met with an avalanche of tweets suggesting the good rhyming picture books. They’re not all bad, you know. So why do rhyming picture books have such a tough reputation?

The truth is, it’s just plain hard to write in rhyme. Think about it. How often do the exact words that express what you want to say happen to rhyme? Not very often, I’ll wager, which is why writing in rhyme sometimes leads authors to choose words that are…not just-right words. Here are some examples of that…

The Overly Simplistic Rhyme:
I like to write in rhyme.
I do it all the time.

The Not-Really-a-Rhyme-Rhyme:
If you like to read rhymes
You should read some of mine.

The Weirdly Forced Rhyme:
When you write in rhyme, you must count each syllables
That’s laying good groundwork, like soil that’s tillable.

(I mean, really… not much rhymes with syllable!)

https://www.katemessner.com/writing-in-rhyme-is-a-lot-trickier-than-you-might-think/#comment-103134

My response:

Thank you for the great post. Last week, I put a request for both of these book at our city library. Rhyming is hard! I like cats, and even though I don't have little children running around anymore, it brought back memories of when they were running all around our house. At the moment, we only have a dog, but I hope to get another cat sometime as my cat of 18 years passed away.

Sasha was enjoying her morning nap.
Until she was pushed off the large arm chair.
Padding upstairs, she found sister's lap,
But brother and his truck, she flew with a scare.

Leaping on the bed the pillow so inviting.
"Go somewhere else, Sasha. I'm wrapping presents."
Down the stairs she crept and heard the doorbell ring,
As the door opened darting outside made the most sense.