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"Hunting For The Whipperwoo — Book Offers Rhyming Fun Through Poetry"
Reprinted from The
Deer Park Broadcaster
Deer Park, Texas
By Mary Ellen Wilson
Paul Borgese has authored several children's books, including When Fish Go Peopling and A Sunday Stroll. One of his books, Hunting for the Whipperwoo, is an adventure in poetry for children. It is Borgese's first collection of poems and is a fun way to introduce children to poetry.
I read many of the poems to a 3-year-old and she seemed delighted in the selections. Ashleigh Isaacson, 7, read the poems and said, "I like Hunting for the Whipperwoo because it is funny. I think other kids would like it. I liked the poem, 'A Cat Named Lollipop' because it says one day she found the jar of lollipops and she ate so many, she turned into one. I like "Inside My Bellybutton" because it is funny. I like 'What Andy Fiddlebait Ate' because it rhymes. I like 'Trouble in the Closet' because the clothes fight. I like 'When the Toilet Overflows' because it's funny."
The rhyming is catchy and the messages are fun and silly — both help to get a child's attention.
"Books written in rhyme are interesting to kids because they are systematic and predictable, and children can begin to guess along with them," said Reid Lyon, PhD, an expert in language and learning disabilities at the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development in Maryland. "Rhymes also help kids understand that each word they hear is made up of individual sound parts, which is a very important lesson for reading and writing."
Psychologists like Lyon use rhyme to identify learning problems in school-age children. For example, a kindergarten student who has trouble finding a rhyme for "cat" are likely to have reading difficulties later.
"Parents can prepare youngsters for reading by exposing them early in life to sound patterns that have consistency — where they are not only hearing words, but learning how sounds can move about to form new words," says Lyons.
Here's a sample of one poem from Hunting for the Whipperwoo:
INSIDE MY BELLYBUTTON
I had the most incredible
question!
It came upon me all of a sudden!
What is it for? What does it store?
What's inside my bellybutton?
So I decided to
explore
What's inside my bellybutton.
But someone stole what's inside that hole!
I found absolutely nothin'!
For more information, call 1-800-236-6048 or go to www.PaulBorgese.com.
