In 1983, like Archimedes before me, I had a eureka moment while taking a bath. I hadn’t discovered a new scientific principle – I had simply come up with a rhyming couplet. I ran dripping from the bath and scribbled the words down on a scrap of paper: “To keep warm in the arctic air a polar bear wears polar wear.”
I was right to think my inspiration was worth scrambling out of the bath because these became the first words of my first-ever picture book. They turned out to be an indication of the artistic direction I was to take: many of the 45 or so books I’ve published since then have been written in rhyme. I’m a sucker for it.
Why? Because it’s fun, it’s memorable, it tells the story in a very pleasing way and it brings out the rhythm of language.
As far as I can remember, my earliest introduction to rhyme came from a record we had at home of Stanley Holloway reading a monologue called “Albert and the Lion” (Marriott Edgar). This is a cautionary tale about a boy who goes to the zoo with his parents and gets eaten by a lion. Though I haven’t heard it for four decades, I can still remember a few of its phrases. That’s one great benefit of rhyme – it’s memorable. Apart from the Lancastrian dialect it employs, this text is characterised by a good dose of ironic humour. Rhyming is good, rhyming laced with comedy is even better. (I applied this important principle in my Duck in the Truck series.)
I have a strong memory also of the rhyming couplets found under each illustration in the Rupert the Bear annuals. I could never understand why they bothered writing out the story at the bottom of the page in prose when the couplets did the same job so precisely and elegantly, with the added benefit of rhyme. Writing in rhyme forces you to choose words carefully and economically.
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