Karen GoatKeeper's Blog - Posts Tagged "alliteration"
Wonderful World of Words
Tongue twisters. Remember them? How much wood would a woodchuck chuck, if a woodchuck could chuck wood? Or Rubber Baby Buggy Bumpers?
Or Edgar Allen Poe's "The Raven" or especially "The Bells."
Words have such wonderful sounds. People with small vocabularies have no idea how rich the sounds of English are.
Some time back I started playing with goat tongue twisters. Yes, more goats.
One by one I have worked my way through the letters to Q writing quick stories, tongue twisters and alliterations on goat topics.
Q has me stumped. For now. I will sit down with the unabridged dictionary to leaf through all the Q entries until the topic appears in front of me.
Why should the sounds of words matter to a writer?
In any book words can help create the setting, the situation. Their sounds can make a reader hear the wind, the sea, the rise and fall of a carousel. They can add depth to a sentence. They can twist the meaning of a sentence through their connotations.
So often only picture book writers are urged to pay attention to their words. The rest of us are missing out by not doing the same.
Or Edgar Allen Poe's "The Raven" or especially "The Bells."
Words have such wonderful sounds. People with small vocabularies have no idea how rich the sounds of English are.
Some time back I started playing with goat tongue twisters. Yes, more goats.
One by one I have worked my way through the letters to Q writing quick stories, tongue twisters and alliterations on goat topics.
Q has me stumped. For now. I will sit down with the unabridged dictionary to leaf through all the Q entries until the topic appears in front of me.
Why should the sounds of words matter to a writer?
In any book words can help create the setting, the situation. Their sounds can make a reader hear the wind, the sea, the rise and fall of a carousel. They can add depth to a sentence. They can twist the meaning of a sentence through their connotations.
So often only picture book writers are urged to pay attention to their words. The rest of us are missing out by not doing the same.
"Animal Alphabet Antics", "anything" and "Plants That Never Ever Bloom"
An eclectic collection this week.
Plants That Never Ever Bloom
5 stars
Author/Illustrator: Ruth Heller
Although some of the plants in this book are not really considered plants, this is a wonderful look at plants that do not make flowers. It covers the fungi (mushrooms), mosses (lichens and liverwort) and gymnosperms (pines).
The author is a botanical illustrator so the illustrations are superb. There are other creatures included in them making them more like what you would see when you found these plants. My one regret is that the different ones are not named.
Anywhere
5 stars
Author: Rebecca Stead
Illustrator: Gracey Zhang
A little girl has just moved with her father to a new apartment. It's her birthday and the zero birthday of the apartment. She can have three wishes.
The illustrations are bare bone line drawings with color added. Even though they are so sparse, they work well with the text.
Animal Alphabet Antics
3 stars
Author/Illustrator: Pat Lampe
This is an illustrated book, not a picture book for young children.
For older readers the book is a fun look at paint colors, dances and fantastic poses of animals. It goes through the alphabet with a description somewhat alliterative and has an alliterative saying for each letter.
The biggest points of interests are the various colors (zaffir, teal, heliotrope etc.) and dances (gigue, elance, ye ye, volta etc.).
Plants That Never Ever Bloom
5 stars
Author/Illustrator: Ruth Heller
Although some of the plants in this book are not really considered plants, this is a wonderful look at plants that do not make flowers. It covers the fungi (mushrooms), mosses (lichens and liverwort) and gymnosperms (pines).
The author is a botanical illustrator so the illustrations are superb. There are other creatures included in them making them more like what you would see when you found these plants. My one regret is that the different ones are not named.
Anywhere
5 stars
Author: Rebecca Stead
Illustrator: Gracey Zhang
A little girl has just moved with her father to a new apartment. It's her birthday and the zero birthday of the apartment. She can have three wishes.
The illustrations are bare bone line drawings with color added. Even though they are so sparse, they work well with the text.
Animal Alphabet Antics
3 stars
Author/Illustrator: Pat Lampe
This is an illustrated book, not a picture book for young children.
For older readers the book is a fun look at paint colors, dances and fantastic poses of animals. It goes through the alphabet with a description somewhat alliterative and has an alliterative saying for each letter.
The biggest points of interests are the various colors (zaffir, teal, heliotrope etc.) and dances (gigue, elance, ye ye, volta etc.).
