Children's Verse

Adults sometimes think of poetry as mysterious, complex, and decidedly not for children. In fact, most children have been listening to poetry since they were babies, in the form of nursery rhymes and lullabies. At its most basic level, poetry is about language and its sounds. For a toddler or preschooler, what could be more exciting than playing - playing with sounds in the form of alliteration, rhyme, rhythm, and assonance as they pop up in the silliness of Dr. Seuss or Jack Prelutsky; as children grow into their elementary years, the comparitive brevity of poems offer quick emotional insights into life's mysteries in ways that other literature cannot; in the teenage years, poems become important ways to understand culture, literature, and history.