That slow, lumbering tortoise must have been at least a little bit crazy to race against the famously fast hare. The odds were clearly not in his favor. Some versions of this fable endow the tortoise with near-psychic certainty that the hare's arrogance will cause him to lose. However, it could also be that the tortoise simply saw an opportunity to do his personal best at something new and difficult, something outside his comfort zone.

That second possibility—the magic of aiming high—is how I chose to interpret his motivation in my own rhymed retelling of The Tortoise & the Hare, published this month. It's the third and final book in my folktale series (which also includes The Golden Ball and The Three Little Pigs), and is also the result of taking on a significant technical challenge as a poet.

I write in rhyme because I firmly believe in its power to aid kids in their quest for literacy. So far, my books have been in either iambic* or anapestic† tetrameter, which are common rhythms in rhymed children's books. I select the meter for each book based on what kind of story I'm telling. For example, the quick, waltz-like beat of anapestic tetrameter gives my version of The Three Little Pigs some of its high energy bounce as the eponymous characters flee the wolf, while my Halloween book, Spooky Things, uses slower-paced iambic tetrameter to complement the gently eerie atmosphere.

I'm always looking for new ways to grow as a poet and an artist, and at some point, I began to think about combining both of these meters within a single book. It occurred to me that the fable of the tortoise and the hare would be a perfect springboard to explore this idea: Using a "slower" meter for the tortoise and a "faster" one for the hare would embed the pace of the race directly into the story text itself.

So how does that work?

English is an inherently stress-based language. This includes both syllables within a word (e.g., to-MOR-row) and also words within the context of a phrase (e.g., prepositions and articles are naturally de-emphasized compared to other words—the CAT in the HAT). And the poet's task, simply put, is to ensure that the syllables and words we would normally stress in speech line up precisely with the stressed beats ("DUM") in these rhythms. This is, of course, much easier said than done—and switching meters with each turn of the page only increases the possible pitfalls.

Let's consider three phrases:

1) "Except the tortoise"

In two-syllable words, it's usually clear which syllable is stressed more strongly than the other: Ex-CEPT the TOR-toise (da DUM da DUM da)

This fits with the beginning of an iambic line—there is really no other way to read it without sounding strange.

2) "On the day of the race"

We intuitively emphasize the nouns over the prepositions and articles: On the DAY of the RACE (da da DUM da da DUM )

This is an anapestic rhythm. Some readers might also stress On since it's the first word in the phrase, but by the time they reach day of the race, the waltz beat will dominate (assuming the rest of the line continues in a similar pattern).

3) "And while the hare splashed"

It isn't immediately obvious how to read this. The noun and verb are both one-syllable words, with nothing to suggest how to stress them relative to each other. And and the are probably going to be unstressed. In other situations, while might not receive stress, but here it's likely to be perceived as stressed because it falls between two unstressed words. Part of what makes writing poetry so tricky is that many stresses in English rely on context.

So you could say either: And WHILE the HARE splashed (which could be iambic), or And WHILE the hare SPLASHED (which could be anapestic).



The above examples are intended only to provide some insight into the mechanics of creating a poem. I'm definitely not suggesting that this level of analysis is needed to read a rhyming book to a child. On the contrary—the meter should be obviously present, supporting the story and making it fun. Likewise, changing meter should not require active effort from the reader. It's the poet's job to provide that structure and flow.

Which is why, before I fully committed to writing the entire book in alternating meters, I wrote a few sample pages to test the idea. I prevailed upon my unsuspecting friends and family, asking them to read my "mystery text" aloud without knowing what it was or what I hoped to learn. I wanted to mimic the experience of picking up an unfamiliar book in a store or library and browsing a few pages at random. As a result of these experiments, I eliminated ambiguous lines that resembled #3 above, which failed to reliably switch the reader to the desired meter.

Below is an excerpt from the final version of The Tortoise & the Hare, beginning with four iambic or "slow" lines, followed by four anapestic or "fast" lines, and then four more "slow" iambic lines. If you clap on the stressed beats at a constant pace throughout, you should be able to hear the rhythm speed up in the middle and then slow back down again.

Ex-CEPT the TOR-toise. HE stayed IN.
Now, HE did NOT ex-PECT to WIN.
In-STEAD he SAID, "I'll DO my BEST.
That's ALL. I CAN'T con-TROL the REST."
On the DAY of the RACE, the hare LAUGHED till he CRIED
When the SLOW, stead-y TOR-toise showed UP at his SIDE.
On their MARKS, they got SET, and were READ-y to PLAY.
Then the ROOST-er crowed, "GO!" and the HARE zoomed a-WAY.
The TOR-toise PLOD-ded FAR be-HIND.
The DAY was WARM. He DID-n't MIND.
He COUNT-ed CLOUDS and SANG a SONG
As STEP by STEP he CREPT a-LONG.

Reviews for this new book of mine are only just starting to appear, so I don't yet have a good sense of how it will be received by the world at large. But in terms of my own personal and artistic growth, this has already been a risk worth taking.

A new giveaway for The Tortoise & the Hare starts next week here on Goodreads, so be sure to sign up!

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*The pattern of stresses (BOLD CAPS) in a line of iambic tetrameter: da DUM da DUM da DUM da DUM

†The pattern of stresses (BOLD CAPS) in a line of anapestic tetrameter: da da DUM da da DUM da da DUM da da DUM