Spring is springing everywhere and it's easy to
imagine dancing through a field of flowers and spinning around, full of song on
top of a mountain like Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music.
One of my favorite interviews I did for a magazine was
with country singer and multiple-award-winnning songwriter Dierks Bentley. We
spoke about the best picture books having a musicality flowing through the
rhythm of the words, echoing the same craft used in writing great songs.
National Poetry Month has just ended, but poetry is a
part of our daily lives. We're attuned and attracted to patterns and rhythms in
words we hear in songs and those we read, too. You can keep a "poem in
your pocket" or "sing, sing a song" every day, at any time. I
think of this as mind music and it's what gives songs that hook that
makes you want to sing along and what gives great picture books that
readability that makes you want to read them again and again.
I used rhythm and a song-style phrasing in sections of
my nature picture books. In This Tree Counts!, the character Eli says,
"Tree house, tree house in the sky, grow some wings and I can fly!"
That line rhymes, but you can use sounds to create a rhythm without rhyming,
too. In These Rocks Count!, a characters says, "Hot or cold,
wind, snow, and rain—rocks get old, cycle of change."
Mind Music Writing Prompts
These phrases from some golden oldies can prompt
students to write their own short chorus and create a refrain that can be
shared aloud. Choose prompts from poems or songs which have a natural rhythm
like these to help students spring, spring, sing on their own.
I did it my way.
Don't step on my blue suede shoes.
The Camptown ladies sing this song.
Take me out to the ballgame.
What a day for a daydream.
