Customer Reviews

Read a Rhyme, Write a Rhyme

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As a teacher for third and fourth grade students, it is sometimes difficult to convince them that they can be master poets. This innovative book by Prelutsky helps them to rise to the challenge. By getting to read an amusing poem first,then guided through writing a creative one for themselves, Jack Prelutsky has allowed kids to tinker with the idea of poetry without having to follow a certain set of rules. The kids love his work, and his ideas and poem starters set them off on the "write" track. It has become one of the most borrowed books from my personal library.

How do you encourage young poets to get started? One way is through the method advocated in Read a Rhyme, Write a Rhyme: by creating a 'poemstart' which offers a beginning structure and tells the young poet to follow along. The purpose is to provide enough encouragement and direction to allow kids to continue the effort: pictures by Meilo So add excitement and energy to the beginner's 'poemstarts' featured here.

This book is fun but teaches little about poetry other than how to end sentences in rhyming words. It gives kids a head start, but with a poem that the author (a poet laureate) mostly wrote, that isn't much of a feeling of accomplishment.