PB 14:14 Day Six/Tadpole Rex

  

Title: Tadpole Rex

Author/Illustrator: Kurt Cyrus

Publisher: Harcourt

Year: 2008

Word Count: Approx. 400

Summary: A tiny primordial tadpole grows into a frog, feeling just as strong and powerful as the huge tyrannosaurus rex that stomps through the mud.

Rhyme is the picture book element I’m featuring today for the PB 14:14 blog challenge. I love rhyming picture books and wish I could write one too. My grandmother was a poet, so you’d think it would be in my genes, but although I love writing children’s stories (and feel I got my writing skills from my gram), the ability to write poetry and rhyme has continued to elude me.

Thankfully, there are authors like Kurt Cyrus who are masters at rhyming and show us how it’s done through their amazing picture books. Tadpole Rex is one such book. It is a rhyming story with nonfiction elements. Not only does the story flow beautifully and rhyme flawlessly as it follows the life of the tiny tadpole, it also introduces children to dinosaurs.

Check out this first line:

Deep in the goop of a long-ago swamp,

a whopping big dinosaur went for a stomp.

Now if that line doesn’t capture a child’s interest, I don’t know what will.

There’s also Word Play throughout the story, as the author uses onomatopoeia in conjunction with the rhyme. Check out this next line:

Stomp! went the dinosaur. Squish! went the goop.

Up came the bubbles-

Bloop.

Bloop.

Bloop.

Here are more fun onomatopoeic words used in the story:

Swish

Splash

Floop

Fleep

Ribbet

Tadpole Rex is a lot of fun to read aloud. Here’s more of the glorious rhyme:

Gone are the dinosaurs. Gone are the stompers,

the rippers, the roarers, the bone-crunching chompers.

Gone are the dinosaurs, swept away…

But hoppers and croakers are here to stay.