How fortunate am I to work in a children’s library?! Thank you, Rona, for reminding me what a treasure I have in my latest, and most likely, last, occupational endeavor (of my otherwise previously lackluster jobs).
Almost each shift, I discover yet another gem from my childhood.
Isn’t it wonderful how a simple sentence can be a prelude to one of our best adventures in life?!
“...you may go into the fields or down the lane, but don’t go into Mr. McGregor’s garden...” from my absolute favorite book, I love how this sentence starts with such a happy sing-song-y flow then stops abruptly with a sharp “don’t” followed by a sharp warning. my girls are 16 and 13 now but we will always be in love with Peter Rabbit! thank you for slipping this memory into my Sunday morning!
Loved this! I agree there are enough writing prompts in the world but not enough of this kind of close critical reading of what makes a story work. I look forward to reading more of your musings on the craft of writing!
Me! I loved it too...didn’t respond fast enough. My grandmother hooked me on books... I won’t ramble here... but really want to say your way with words is the thing!! You could write about paint drying and it would mesmerize us all! What a gift you have, a treasured site we rely on! Well done again, Rona! ❤️😊
Hi Rona, I’m a new reader here and adored this post! Practically lapped up your words. 🐶✨ I remember Virginia Lee Burton’s “The Little House” grabbing my attention when I was little. Most children’s books I read as a kid were in Japanese, though! (And I’m not anywhere as fluent now to write in Japanese.)
Rona, I swear to you, we are soulmates. (That's a good thing for me; I don't know about you.) This was absolutely delicious!
I too am drawn to those sentences with rhythm and cadence, and I think it comes from my childhood reading. You're so right about those two first sentences. They're perfect! They're the way any child would want them to be. Children want to feel those words, not just hear them
Congratulations on your book, as well. No small thing to have Hilma Wolitzer endorse it!
I wrote a children's story years ago, one that I've loved but could never sell, mainly because it's told from an adult's point of view. But it has that kind of rhythm at times and it's deliberate. I wanted it to read like poetry. I'm going to drag it out one of these days and give it another look...
It’s always a joy to find a soulmate who treasures small details of wordcraft for the magic they hold. If you have the ear and eye of a poet, a little poetry will touch all your writing. What a gift. I thought this post might be too nerdish and am delighted to find myself mistaken.
As a young teenager I fell in love with poetry while reading "The Outsiders" by S.E. Hinton. To this day decades later I can quote one of the poems from that book: "Nature's first green is gold. Her hardest hue to hold. Her early leaf's a flower but only so an hour..." (the poem quoted by Hinton is "Nothing Gold Can Stay" by Robert Frost.)
I discovered THE OUTSIDERS late in life while contemplating a YA novel I meant to write (didn't happen). It's terrific. Btw, Sue, I love your art and just subscribed. Cannot comment there (not paid) but will watch for you on Notes.
As far as I can tell, Rona, by looking at my settings you should be able to comment on my stuff. But I am older than 6 years old and technology beyond a fountain pen is an acquired substance... so it is possible that I've missed something. Please know I am delighted to know you now and to see your work and be able to share mine with you... here's hoping you'll be able to comment in future. 🤞💚
I try/ intend to have the comments on my page free for all and not restrict to paid... I will check and make sure it is so you can comment!! Thank you for subscribing!! And thanks for telling me about the difficulty you had re comments. 💚💚💚
Drag your book out Ramona!! Self publish it if nothing else!! After decades of being told by children's book publishers in the USA that my artwork and my writing was "too sophisticated" for kids - I self published and was picked up by Storyberries.com which is based in Australia. Long story short in my experience outside the US book publishers and distributors aren't so allergic to art and words that have poetic substances to them.
Go with your vision!!! Stay true to it and find a way to do it yourself!!! That's the best way I know of to avoid the dumbing down of ones heart-work by a profit-uber-ales style committee and the attending enshitification of such bs.
Rona, I love your post and the comments on it too. I’m not familiar with The Sailor Dog but found your parsing of the opening very interesting.
I can’t at the moment recall a book as early as your example that I could say captured me specifically with its language. I can, however, remember being dazzled by the writing, imagination, and also humour in the novel The Last Unicorn (1968) by Peter S. Beagle. (The later animated adaptation had none of the same magic.) It was the first book I remember reading that made me think, desperately, “I want to write something beautiful like this!”
Here are the opening lines:
“The unicorn lived in a lilac wood, and she lived all alone. She was very old, though she did not know it, and she was no longer the careless color of sea foam, but rather the color of snow falling on a moonlit night. But her eyes were still clear and unwearied, and she still moved like a shadow on the sea.”
Yes, I see how that passage would live in your memory. I took a bit of license in this piece. I know that sentence enraptured me because I've remembered it my whole life. I know where my mother read to me and how she read. So I'm confident the love affair began as described. During her lifetime, my mother remembered my passion for this book. In the pre-internet days, my husband searched high and low for a copy to replace the one I lost after leaving my parents' home. He knew how I missed it. That's another story.
I loved reading this. Just last evening I was reading a book of poetry to my 9 year old granddaughter. I had purchased it years ago before she was even born because I loved the whimsical illustrations. (At the time I thought I would enjoy writing and illustrating children's books. After taking courses, lots of work, submissions and rejections, I put those away a long time ago.). I always read to her before bed when she is visiting but usually a book, not poems. Her comments were so very spot on when she identified certain poems she loved and why. The title of the book I am referencing, "Talking Like the Rain", says it all I think.
What a beautifully evocative title, Debra. And what a special moment between the two of you. Earlier in this thread, Julie Scolnik mentions a similar ritual between her mother and her daughter--a bonding not only between the two of them but between books and hearts.
Loved this article, Rona. Reminds me of so much of Tom Moran's wisdom in "First, You Write a Sentence". And, was it Yeats (?), "the roll, the rise, the carol, the creation".
"In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit."
This from a revered professor of Anglo Saxon literature at Oxford. I could never read a book of any kind whose opening sentence was simply words on the page. I had to hear it. A master of the iambic was Shakespeare, which is why great actors make his characters speak in a language we still understand. And why some find themselves speaking in blank verse when they go home and talk to their partners. "We must have the plumber this weekend to see to the drains."
Poetry in my prose? My mother saw to that: She wove quotations from the canon into everyday conversation, caring not at all who understood. She trusted me to get it. Love that plumber.
And what a first post on writing! I loved this piece.
I had never heard of this story before. Amazing after three kids and five grandkids.
That first sentence is astounding.
My dad was the bedtime storyteller. My younger, ((by 16 months), brother and I would squeeze in on either side of dad on my single bed and be lulled to calm every night. He read poems, Grimms, and stuff that would keep him from falling asleep but it was always enough to excite us and settle us down at the same time.
I love the reference to gorgeous adult words. The more of those, the better when I progressed to reading myself to sleep.
Last night I downloaded Starter Dog and “met” Scuppers.
I stayed up way too late reading!
Perfect timing with this essay!
I always enjoy what you write here. I learn as much from your content as I do from the way you present it. I envy your vocabulary, too!
My writing has always been on the humorous side, with the short, punchy sentences embraced by many newspaper columnists.
In college I often wrote silly poems. I went to a Catholic girls’ college in NH.
Those were the days of curfews, demerits and dress codes.
After one particularly stressful incident involving a friend’s taking a loaf of bread from the dining hall (Les Miserables?) -- and her subsequent conviction and punishment -- I penned an ode to the cafeteria manager.
Sister Valentine.
I called it The Queen of Hearts.
One line remains in my memory, 50-plus years later.
While students are eating the strange concoctions they served (icebox surprise or maybe hot dog soup), the Queen dines royally.
The line:
“She just returned from evening Mass to dine on Pheasant Under Glass.”
I forgot to add, in my previous comment: What an amazing coincidence that you ordered the book last night. It's not famous and doesn't get a mention in the last biography of Margaret Wise Brown. I was too miffed to read the book.
Yes and yes and yes yes yes .The spell begins. Thank you Rona. I woke up from a dream where I was teaching children’s literature again ( not going to happen ) but it was getting people excited to begin a year of exploring the power of children’s literature — then I read this first thing . And I got excited . The impact of stories we embody somehow …c’est magique! I have a book to send you and will .. one day .xo
Oh, Rona, thanks so much for suggesting this post of yours. I love your analysis of the poetic rhythm of that first line. It’s an ode to how we tune our inner ear to the sound of language, something that is one of the joys of reading books like *Good Night, Moon* or *Sailor Dog* over and over as bedtime stories to a small child. I often read my lines aloud to myself, because that helps me pare down and sing when a piece requires me to. Your memoir looks wonderful as well.
I was a fairy tale girl. 'Once upon a time' still gives me goosebumps and puts my butt down into the nearest chair to hear what happens next. But I vividly remember the lines of my brother's favorite Little Golden Book - he couldn't even read, but he'd memorized it and 'read' it all the way from Georgia to Chicago and back. A LONG car trip. The Monster At The End of This Book, a Sesame Street book with Grover as the main character. I can still hear my brother's piping little voice as Grover "YOU TURNED THE PAGE!!" https://www.amazon.com/Monster-End-This-Book/dp/0307010856?asin=0307010856&revisionId=&format=4&depth=1
Beautiful. And how wonderful that you can remember the sentence, the rhythm, the feeling, the moment. Your essay also sent me down a rabbit hole re Ursula Nordstrom (I think the NYer ran a piece about her in recent years but I haven't found it yet) and Garth Williams (castle in Mexico?!?).
I wonder if that's what I was thinking of. I was so enamored of Garth Williams' illustrations as a child. Laura and Mary, Stuart Little, Charlotte and Wilbur...
I’m whistling sea shanties and sipping coffee now. What a wonderful post to read on this chilly morning, thank you!
It makes me think about what makes certain sentences special. And it reminds me that the word prose exists, somehow, even though it sounds like it shouldn’t. Prose doesn’t come up much in normal life.
“Ah, Betty, Yeaterday was hard. My five year old threw a tantrum, the cat hawked a giant hairball on the rug, and Richard’s prose was substandard.”
How fortunate am I to work in a children’s library?! Thank you, Rona, for reminding me what a treasure I have in my latest, and most likely, last, occupational endeavor (of my otherwise previously lackluster jobs).
Almost each shift, I discover yet another gem from my childhood.
Isn’t it wonderful how a simple sentence can be a prelude to one of our best adventures in life?!
Wonderful, indeed. What a joy to be surrounded by books and the children who discover them.
“...you may go into the fields or down the lane, but don’t go into Mr. McGregor’s garden...” from my absolute favorite book, I love how this sentence starts with such a happy sing-song-y flow then stops abruptly with a sharp “don’t” followed by a sharp warning. my girls are 16 and 13 now but we will always be in love with Peter Rabbit! thank you for slipping this memory into my Sunday morning!
Nice use of foreshadowing, too.
Loved this! I agree there are enough writing prompts in the world but not enough of this kind of close critical reading of what makes a story work. I look forward to reading more of your musings on the craft of writing!
Thanks for speaking up. I did wonder how many readers would care about this.
Me! I loved it too...didn’t respond fast enough. My grandmother hooked me on books... I won’t ramble here... but really want to say your way with words is the thing!! You could write about paint drying and it would mesmerize us all! What a gift you have, a treasured site we rely on! Well done again, Rona! ❤️😊
Smiling as I read this.
Me!! I care about this too!!!
If you really feel moved to say something, you simply have to say it. I'm so glad you found me here. There will be more posts on similar lines.
Yippee!!! 💚💚💚💚
Hi Rona, I’m a new reader here and adored this post! Practically lapped up your words. 🐶✨ I remember Virginia Lee Burton’s “The Little House” grabbing my attention when I was little. Most children’s books I read as a kid were in Japanese, though! (And I’m not anywhere as fluent now to write in Japanese.)
I remember that one. My nursery school teacher read it to our class. Hope you'll stop by again, Erika.
Rona, I swear to you, we are soulmates. (That's a good thing for me; I don't know about you.) This was absolutely delicious!
I too am drawn to those sentences with rhythm and cadence, and I think it comes from my childhood reading. You're so right about those two first sentences. They're perfect! They're the way any child would want them to be. Children want to feel those words, not just hear them
Congratulations on your book, as well. No small thing to have Hilma Wolitzer endorse it!
I wrote a children's story years ago, one that I've loved but could never sell, mainly because it's told from an adult's point of view. But it has that kind of rhythm at times and it's deliberate. I wanted it to read like poetry. I'm going to drag it out one of these days and give it another look...
It’s always a joy to find a soulmate who treasures small details of wordcraft for the magic they hold. If you have the ear and eye of a poet, a little poetry will touch all your writing. What a gift. I thought this post might be too nerdish and am delighted to find myself mistaken.
As a young teenager I fell in love with poetry while reading "The Outsiders" by S.E. Hinton. To this day decades later I can quote one of the poems from that book: "Nature's first green is gold. Her hardest hue to hold. Her early leaf's a flower but only so an hour..." (the poem quoted by Hinton is "Nothing Gold Can Stay" by Robert Frost.)
I discovered THE OUTSIDERS late in life while contemplating a YA novel I meant to write (didn't happen). It's terrific. Btw, Sue, I love your art and just subscribed. Cannot comment there (not paid) but will watch for you on Notes.
As far as I can tell, Rona, by looking at my settings you should be able to comment on my stuff. But I am older than 6 years old and technology beyond a fountain pen is an acquired substance... so it is possible that I've missed something. Please know I am delighted to know you now and to see your work and be able to share mine with you... here's hoping you'll be able to comment in future. 🤞💚
I try/ intend to have the comments on my page free for all and not restrict to paid... I will check and make sure it is so you can comment!! Thank you for subscribing!! And thanks for telling me about the difficulty you had re comments. 💚💚💚
Drag your book out Ramona!! Self publish it if nothing else!! After decades of being told by children's book publishers in the USA that my artwork and my writing was "too sophisticated" for kids - I self published and was picked up by Storyberries.com which is based in Australia. Long story short in my experience outside the US book publishers and distributors aren't so allergic to art and words that have poetic substances to them.
Good to know! I have visions of seeing my book in print. I can even picture the illustrations. Watercolors and silhouettes, I think...
Go with your vision!!! Stay true to it and find a way to do it yourself!!! That's the best way I know of to avoid the dumbing down of ones heart-work by a profit-uber-ales style committee and the attending enshitification of such bs.
Avoid the bs! Follow your heart!!
Thanks. I think I will!
💚💚💚🤗💚💚💚
Rona, I love your post and the comments on it too. I’m not familiar with The Sailor Dog but found your parsing of the opening very interesting.
I can’t at the moment recall a book as early as your example that I could say captured me specifically with its language. I can, however, remember being dazzled by the writing, imagination, and also humour in the novel The Last Unicorn (1968) by Peter S. Beagle. (The later animated adaptation had none of the same magic.) It was the first book I remember reading that made me think, desperately, “I want to write something beautiful like this!”
Here are the opening lines:
“The unicorn lived in a lilac wood, and she lived all alone. She was very old, though she did not know it, and she was no longer the careless color of sea foam, but rather the color of snow falling on a moonlit night. But her eyes were still clear and unwearied, and she still moved like a shadow on the sea.”
Yes, I see how that passage would live in your memory. I took a bit of license in this piece. I know that sentence enraptured me because I've remembered it my whole life. I know where my mother read to me and how she read. So I'm confident the love affair began as described. During her lifetime, my mother remembered my passion for this book. In the pre-internet days, my husband searched high and low for a copy to replace the one I lost after leaving my parents' home. He knew how I missed it. That's another story.
I remember that book! I agree with you; it was dazzling
He sailed to England too!
I loved reading this. Just last evening I was reading a book of poetry to my 9 year old granddaughter. I had purchased it years ago before she was even born because I loved the whimsical illustrations. (At the time I thought I would enjoy writing and illustrating children's books. After taking courses, lots of work, submissions and rejections, I put those away a long time ago.). I always read to her before bed when she is visiting but usually a book, not poems. Her comments were so very spot on when she identified certain poems she loved and why. The title of the book I am referencing, "Talking Like the Rain", says it all I think.
What a beautifully evocative title, Debra. And what a special moment between the two of you. Earlier in this thread, Julie Scolnik mentions a similar ritual between her mother and her daughter--a bonding not only between the two of them but between books and hearts.
Loved this article, Rona. Reminds me of so much of Tom Moran's wisdom in "First, You Write a Sentence". And, was it Yeats (?), "the roll, the rise, the carol, the creation".
"In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit."
This from a revered professor of Anglo Saxon literature at Oxford. I could never read a book of any kind whose opening sentence was simply words on the page. I had to hear it. A master of the iambic was Shakespeare, which is why great actors make his characters speak in a language we still understand. And why some find themselves speaking in blank verse when they go home and talk to their partners. "We must have the plumber this weekend to see to the drains."
There is much poetry in your prose, by the way.
Poetry in my prose? My mother saw to that: She wove quotations from the canon into everyday conversation, caring not at all who understood. She trusted me to get it. Love that plumber.
And what a first post on writing! I loved this piece.
I had never heard of this story before. Amazing after three kids and five grandkids.
That first sentence is astounding.
My dad was the bedtime storyteller. My younger, ((by 16 months), brother and I would squeeze in on either side of dad on my single bed and be lulled to calm every night. He read poems, Grimms, and stuff that would keep him from falling asleep but it was always enough to excite us and settle us down at the same time.
I love the reference to gorgeous adult words. The more of those, the better when I progressed to reading myself to sleep.
Thanks for this, Rona.
Your father prepared you well for life. Compassion and curiosity begin with reading. It’s the wellspring of everything.
Last night I downloaded Starter Dog and “met” Scuppers.
I stayed up way too late reading!
Perfect timing with this essay!
I always enjoy what you write here. I learn as much from your content as I do from the way you present it. I envy your vocabulary, too!
My writing has always been on the humorous side, with the short, punchy sentences embraced by many newspaper columnists.
In college I often wrote silly poems. I went to a Catholic girls’ college in NH.
Those were the days of curfews, demerits and dress codes.
After one particularly stressful incident involving a friend’s taking a loaf of bread from the dining hall (Les Miserables?) -- and her subsequent conviction and punishment -- I penned an ode to the cafeteria manager.
Sister Valentine.
I called it The Queen of Hearts.
One line remains in my memory, 50-plus years later.
While students are eating the strange concoctions they served (icebox surprise or maybe hot dog soup), the Queen dines royally.
The line:
“She just returned from evening Mass to dine on Pheasant Under Glass.”
Some sentences just stick with us.
Isn't it fun when they're your own? Who has ever seen pheasant under glass? That's a cafeteria I have to check out.
I’m sure she enjoyed her dinner in the convent!
I forgot to add, in my previous comment: What an amazing coincidence that you ordered the book last night. It's not famous and doesn't get a mention in the last biography of Margaret Wise Brown. I was too miffed to read the book.
I downloaded Starter Dog on my Kindle.
I “met” Scuppers through your book, at the beginning when you were contemplating rescuing a dog.
Sorry for any confusion!
Oh, thanks for your support. Reading hastily, I thought you had downloaded Sailor Dog!
Yes and yes and yes yes yes .The spell begins. Thank you Rona. I woke up from a dream where I was teaching children’s literature again ( not going to happen ) but it was getting people excited to begin a year of exploring the power of children’s literature — then I read this first thing . And I got excited . The impact of stories we embody somehow …c’est magique! I have a book to send you and will .. one day .xo
Oh, Sheree, of course you are open to the word spell. It shows in everything you write. I’m delighted to provide the coda for your dream.
Oh, Rona, thanks so much for suggesting this post of yours. I love your analysis of the poetic rhythm of that first line. It’s an ode to how we tune our inner ear to the sound of language, something that is one of the joys of reading books like *Good Night, Moon* or *Sailor Dog* over and over as bedtime stories to a small child. I often read my lines aloud to myself, because that helps me pare down and sing when a piece requires me to. Your memoir looks wonderful as well.
Martha, it’s a pleasure to share that sentence with one who feels the music. Thanks again for this thread.
I was a fairy tale girl. 'Once upon a time' still gives me goosebumps and puts my butt down into the nearest chair to hear what happens next. But I vividly remember the lines of my brother's favorite Little Golden Book - he couldn't even read, but he'd memorized it and 'read' it all the way from Georgia to Chicago and back. A LONG car trip. The Monster At The End of This Book, a Sesame Street book with Grover as the main character. I can still hear my brother's piping little voice as Grover "YOU TURNED THE PAGE!!" https://www.amazon.com/Monster-End-This-Book/dp/0307010856?asin=0307010856&revisionId=&format=4&depth=1
A child's devotion to a beloved story is a marvel. To parents on a long, long road trip, not so much.
My kids loved this book!
Beautiful. And how wonderful that you can remember the sentence, the rhythm, the feeling, the moment. Your essay also sent me down a rabbit hole re Ursula Nordstrom (I think the NYer ran a piece about her in recent years but I haven't found it yet) and Garth Williams (castle in Mexico?!?).
The Marginalian definitely ran an appreciation of her. And I think Williams was featured in The New Yorker.
I wonder if that's what I was thinking of. I was so enamored of Garth Williams' illustrations as a child. Laura and Mary, Stuart Little, Charlotte and Wilbur...
Lovely!
Thanks so much, Diane.
You’re so welcome, Roma. I’m glad you’re here!
Rona--sorry for misspelling!
You did? Didn't notice.
I’m whistling sea shanties and sipping coffee now. What a wonderful post to read on this chilly morning, thank you!
It makes me think about what makes certain sentences special. And it reminds me that the word prose exists, somehow, even though it sounds like it shouldn’t. Prose doesn’t come up much in normal life.
“Ah, Betty, Yeaterday was hard. My five year old threw a tantrum, the cat hawked a giant hairball on the rug, and Richard’s prose was substandard.”