WRITING RHYMING PICTURE BOOK TEXTS by Patricia Cleveland-Peck

 

     This month I have been busy celebrating the publication of my new picture book, You Can't let an Elephant drive a Racing Car and the time has whizzed by so I hope this rather personal blog, which I have adapted from something I was asked to write by the  digital magazine WriteMentor about how I came to write rhyming picture book texts, will be acceptable.

     This latest book is the fifth in a series which began with You Can't take an Elephant on the Bus. I have been surprised and delighted by their becoming best sellers which is something so lovely and unexpected at my time of life. I had wanted to be a writer from about the age of ten but I got side-tracked and trained as a lawyer; no bad thing for a writer as you see people's lives at their most dramatic. It wasn't until I had children of my own however, that I settled down to give writing a book a proper go. I was lucky in that my first children's book The String Family, was accepted by the second publisher I sent it to ( this was before the days when having an agent was essential) and a couple more books about the String characters followed. After that I wrote about fifteen children's books, none of which was a picture book text and none of which was in rhyme.

     As time passed and my children grew up I became a travel journalist, wrote adult non-fiction, plays for radio and the stage and features for BBC radio. It wasn't until I had a granddaughter  that I returned to writing for children. It was Izzie, aged around four, who turned to my husband and said, "You can't take an elephant on the bus Grandpops" that set me off.   No one knew exactly why she said it but it gave me the buzz you get when an idea takes hold and I suddenly realised how much I missed the world of children's stories and so decided to try to re-enter this magical  realm. 

     I suppose one constant throughout my writing career has been a love of words and if journalism taught me one thing, it is how to express myself succinctly. What  also helped a lot was finding the right 'voice.' I knew that  this is often mentioned as something important but voice hd remained a mystery to me until I found mine. When I decided that the narrator of the book would a use rather old-fashioned school-mistressy tone in which to tell the animals what they could and could  not do, the book took off.

    Once again I was lucky. I realised that to get anywhere I would now need an agent so I submitted the idea to one whose name I vaguely remembered from earlier days. She forwarded it to her son who had sine joined the business and he wrote back saying he liked the idea but wasn't officially taking on new clients - but he would give me a six month trial.

     Well reader, he sold it to Bloomsbury in a fortnight!

     I was particularly glad because my husband, the recipient of the Izzie's original words of wisdom, was able to share the joy with me. He had always been very supportive of my writing but he died a few years  later, which after 53 happy years of marriage left an enormous chasm in my life which to some extent the elephants and their antics have helped to fill.

    All these stories concern a gang of silly animals, headed by an elephant, who set out with good intention; to help, to to be good, to win at sports - but they always seem to get things wrong and end up making a mess and generally finding themselves in trouble. 

   This is something with which children can identify.

   The elephant opens all the books but the animals in the gang vary. As each animal is engaged in a different activity I am going against the fundamental advice that every picture book must tell a proper story with a beginning, a middle and an end. My stories are linked only by the situations in which the silly creatures find themselves; transport, going on holiday  competing in sports, trying to he helpful and so on.

    I challenge another piece of received wisdom by using rhyme. Picture books are expensive to produce and need foreign co-editions to make them pay - and rhyme is notoriously difficult to translate. These books have appeared in a variety of exotic languages; two  Chinese versions, Finnish, Polish, Turkish and Korean but none of the more usual European ones. Translation problems apart, children do love rhyme and I thought the combination of rhyme, rhythm, assonance and alliteration would work with the nannyish voice especially if the outcome was funny.     

     PB texts are normally composed of 32 pages, often divided into 13 double page spreads. Mine show the individual animals making mischief followed by a finale of  two double page spreads  showing them all having fun together. This means each animal only has four lines with a few more lines for the finale. This sounds easy ( and compared with my last adult non-fiction book, the history of a flower Auriculas Through the Ages, which involved botanical Latin, old French and climbing a mountain to see the ancestor plants, it is.) With so few words however, every one must count and each set must rhyme and scan properly. I often walk around the house chanting like a maniac and have been known to spend a whole day on one word. Even so I really love writing this way, I've always enjoyed word-play, limericks, clerihews and nonsense verse and I am thrilled to bits when I see children laughing at my efforts.

     The books are brilliantly illustrated by DavidTazzyman who manages to capture the anarchic attitudes of the animals and the often-outraged expressions of the human onlookers.

     So in my case it is a combination of experience at putting words together, finding that elusive voice, not worrying about received advice, a love of nonsense and a great deal of luck which has resulted in this series.

    Oh and by the way, thanks Izzie!