Importance of Children's Poetry

Children’s poetry will always have a lasting impact in literature. The poems created for children in their early years of development help them to learn and connect with the both the natural world and the social world around them. Children’s poetry uses various themes such as humor, fantasy, rhyme and repetition to provide an entertaining and memorable way for children to learn information and have building blocks to the next stages of development. Children are able to learn about nature, history, socialization, and moral lessons through poetry. Susan R. Goldman et.al write in the article “Poetry as a Mnemonic Prompt in Children’s Stories,” “Lyrical, poetic properties of ‘story’ language include rhymes, repeated phrases, rhythmic patterns, and sound patterns such as alliteration or onomatopoeia. In other words, poetic language produces affective involvement in the story world” (346). For children’s poems to be remembered it has to include qualities that make the poem able to be memorized and retained easily so that it can be passed on.

William J. Blake writes in his essay “Historical Meaning in Mother Goose: Nursery Rhymes Illustrative of English Society Before the Industrial Revolution,” “In the late-seventeenth and early-eighteenth centuries several Europeans codified an oral tradition which had existed for some time. Although the rhymes originated in specifically national terms, they are international in theme and type” (645). Rhymes that are as old as Mother Goose were originally told and passed on orally. So poems take on a musical and whimsical quality. The subject matter is humorous and magical, providing the basis for memorable children’s poetry. This tradition isn’t just contained to one country, but is a global process and children’s poetry is able to move across borders and has a lasting popularity with children across generations.

Baker, William J. "Historical Meaning in Mother Goose: Nursery Rhymes Illustrative of English Society Before the Industrial Revolution." Journal of Popular Culture IX.3 (1975): 645-52. Print.

Goldman, Susan R.; Meyerson Peter M.; and Coté Nathalie. "Poetry as a Mnemonic Prompt in Children's Stories." Reading Psychology 27.4 (2006): 345-76. Print.

Importance of Children's Poetry