The Perils of Rhyme

In one of my many incarnations I’m a manuscript assessor. This means I trawl through a publisher’s slush pile assessing, rejecting and occasionally, only very, very occasionally, passing a manuscript onto an in-house editor for closer inspection.

I’ve been reading a lot of submissions for picture books lately, and if there’s one thing I’m finding that’s common for almost every picture book manuscript I’ve read, it’s problems with metre and rhyme.

I know it’s a bit of a cliché – kids love rhyme but editors hate it – so I’ll come right out and admit that yes, picture books that rhyme don’t really appeal to me.

I know, what a party pooper. Call me the Grinch*.

So I’ve just had a look at my bookshelf and very few of my favourite picture books rhyme. There are some notable exceptions of course, and I’m pretty sure there are a few sneaky ones on my shelf that are so well done I don’t even think of them as rhyming. But the fact remains that I have to work especially hard not to read prejudicially when faced with a rhyming picture book. And it almost never fails to send me on a ‘is this me or is there really a problem here?’ tail spin when I read a text that rhymes.

I should also say that I found bad rhyme and metre a problem when I worked as a teacher too, back when I was a public performer of picture books and the ability to read a text effortlessly was very, very important.

So I’ve been thinking carefully about this and I’ve come to a conclusion. While I’m happy to admit my prejudices, I’m still confident in my assessment that rhyme is actually a very, very difficult thing to get right. And when it’s not done right, it reads very badly indeed.

And that’s the thing about rhyme: it’s all too rarely done well. And to me, bad rhymes unravells an entire work.

For it to be good it needs to be seamless. It needs to feel like the rhyme is just a coincidence, that each word was always going to be in that order – I need to feel like there was no other word that could have finished the sentence and it just so happens that it rhymes with the last word of the previous line. I don’t want to get the sense that sentences were constructed around the rhyme and that having to rhyme has directed the course of the plot (you need a rhyme for cat so you have the cat sit on a mat, etc.). Too often rhyming appears contrived and irrelevant to the story. And don’t forget that, while a picture book can be far more sophisticated than a chapter book, you still need to make age-appropriate word choices – just because ‘capillary’ rhymes with ‘quietly’ doesn’t mean you should use it.

To me, if you’re going to rhyme, the rhythm needs to be structured too. This is where metre comes into it. Not only do the syllables in each sentence need to be in some kind of regular pattern, but also the stresses need to be well measured too.

If you want to write rhyming picture books (and please, please ask yourself if the rhyming is necessary to the story) then taking a class or two in poetry is one of the best things you can do. Maybe read Stephen Fry’s excellent The Ode less Travelled, or find a book that works for you. Read existing picture books and copy their rhythm to get in the right habits. And when you’ve written it, have a friend attempt to read it out loud and, with a copy of the piece in front of you, mark wherever they stumble. This will give you a good indication of how well the rhyming and metre is working.

Good luck!

*Yes, I am being ironic ;)