March 1 is National Pig Day in the US, and to celebrate I'm currently holding a Goodreads giveaway for my adaptation of The Three Little Pigs. (Go sign up now! The giveaway closes March 1.)

All of my books rhyme, but the pattern or poetic meter I use varies from book to book. It's a key decision to make for each one because meter plays a huge role in the pacing and overall experience of a poem. In this post, I wanted to share some insight into how I established the rhythmic structure for The Three Little Pigs.

It all started with The Cat in the Hat.

It's no secret that I look up to Dr. Seuss. His masterwork The Cat in the Hat is at the top of my list of favorite books to read aloud. There are many reasons for its enduring popularity, but as a poet, the aspect that inspires me most is the energy of Seuss's work, bouncy and fast-paced and fun.

That incredible energy is in part derived from the story's poetic meter: The quick, waltz-like one-two-three-one-two-three beat (formally known as anapestic tetrameter) underlying the chaos as the zany Cat and his two Things run amok.

Here's a sample couplet from The Cat in the Hat. I've added BOLD CAPS to emphasize the stresses occurring every third syllable:


Then those THINGS ran a-BOUT with big BUMPS, jumps and KICKS
And with HOPS and big THUMPS and all KINDS of bad TRICKS.*


I hadn't ever written a book in anapestic tetrameter before, but I loved that energy, and I wanted to learn how to create it myself.†

As I cast around for the right story to hang on this new meter, I explored a few possibilities from a short list of fairy tales and fables I'd compiled (with the idea that they might be interesting to retell in rhyme someday). One was the story of the three little pigs, and when I applied anapestic tetrameter to it, something remarkable happened. The traditional, rhythmic phrases for which the original version‡ of the story is famous slipped right into that waltzy rhythm like missing puzzle pieces.

Two examples of what I mean by "traditional" phrases:

1) "Oh, no, NOT by the HAIR of my CHIN-ny chin CHIN!"

2) "Then I'll HUFF and I'll PUFF and I'll BLOW your house DOWN!"


It was definitely a eureka moment. I knew I had found the right story for the meter, and I wrote the entire first draft of The Three Little Pigs within two days. Of course, the challenge was to build the rest of the story around those famous phrases so that the complete text consistently maintained the same rhyming beat. Here's an excerpt from the published version to demonstrate how it works:


"Then I'll HUFF and I'll PUFF and I'll BLOW your house DOWN!"
Said the TER-ri-ble WOLF with a TER-ri-ble FROWN.
And he HUFFED and he PUFFED and the LIT-tle straw SHACK
Blew a-PART. Then the WOLF said, "It's TIME for my SNACK."
Well, Pig ONE saw at ONCE that his CHAN-ces were SLIM,
So he JUMPED in the LAKE and he STAR-ted to SWIM.
And he SWAM all the WAY to the OP-po-site SHORE.
Then he RAN to Pig TWO's house and KNOCKED on the DOOR.


And that is why I consider The Cat in the Hat my primary inspiration for The Three Little Pigs, even though these two poems have nothing in common but their metrical form — a fast-paced, bouncy cadence intended to make reading aloud a lot of fun.

(NOTE: You can listen to The Three Little Pigs in full on my videos page!)

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*Dr. Seuss, The Cat in the Hat (New York: Random House, 1985), 45. (Original work published 1957)

†Although Dr. Seuss did not invent anapestic tetrameter, he might be person most famous for using it, since he consistently makes it work brilliantly within the context of extremely limited vocabulary lists. Another famous poem based upon this meter is "The Night Before Christmas" (or "A Visit from St. Nicholas") by Clement Clarke Moore.

‡"The Story of the Three Little Pigs," in The Nursery Rhymes of England, coll. J. O. Halliwell (London and New York: Frederick Warne and Co., 1886), LV. Interestingly, the phrase "big bad wolf" does not appear in this early version of the story — and unlike the other phrases mentioned, it doesn't fit well with this metrical pattern. Ultimately, I chose instead to use the adjective "terrible" to describe the wolf.