Gladys Hunt on Enjoying Poetry with Children

Editor’s Note: This month we’re reading the two chapters in Honey for a Child’s Heart that address poetry. Do you enjoy poetry? Would you like your kids to enjoy it also?

The music words can make

Originally published on the Tumblon website November 10, 2009

Reading poetry to a child is not the same as reading a story. Listening to poetry a child becomes accustomed to words in an unfamiliar arrangement and cadence. Words “rise and fall and flow and pause and echo.” It’s closest to music. It has to be read aloud and have a sound to be appreciated.

Every child needs the experience. We start with nursery rhymes, which are basically nonsensical, but fun to say. The sense doesn’t matter. In fact, the poems that most frequently pop into my mind are the nonsensical ones from happy childhood memories. It’s the rhythm that matters; that’s why children will say, “Sing it again.”

I have happy recollections of our son hopping along the sidewalk on a trip to London and chanting,

            Whenever I walk in a London street,

            I’m ever so careful to watch my feet,

            And I keep in the squares

            And the masses of bears

            Who wait at the corners all ready to eat

            The sillies who tread on the lines of the street,

            Go back to their lairs

            And I say to them, “Bears.

            Just look how I’m walking in all of the squares!”

We read large doses of A.A. Milne to him from When We Were Very Young when he was very young partly because we enjoyed it ourselves.

In fact, just yesterday I greeted a man named James, and one of Milne’s poem popped into my mind, and so I began

            James James

            Morrison Morrison

            Weatherby George Dupree

and he continued the poem in response to my greeting

            Took great

            Care of his Mother,

            Though he was only three.

We laughed together. Someone had been reading the same poetry to both of us.    

Fortunately today there are a variety of poetry books for children—old books and new ones. Sing a Song of Popcorn put together by Beatrice Schenk de Regniers with illustrations by nine Caldecott Medal artists or Edward Lear’s The Complete Nonsense Book. There is Jack Prelutsky and Shel Silverstein and Nancy Larrick and Carl Sandburg—so many to enjoy.

Poetry puts feelings into words. It catches you before you catch it. Poet William Stafford said that “When a poem catches you, it overwhelms, it surprises, it shakes you up. And often you can’t provide any usual explanation for its power.”

Further, poems are about enjoying language. Start with light doses for your children. Recite rhymes to them and let them hear the music words can make.

© Gladys M. Hunt 2008-10, reissued in 2022 with minor adjustments with permission of the Executor of the Literary Estate of Gladys M. Hunt (4194 Hilton SE, Lowell, MI 49331). Used by permission. All rights reserved.

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