ABSTRACT
Young children, without being obsessed by rationality or logic, find pleasure in repetitions, the articulation of sounds and the way words create powerful images; they are not too concerned why it is that the little boy down the lane should need a bag of wool, nor why the dish decided to run away with the spoon. As Preen (1999) has pointed out, children do not ask, in response to ‘Humpty Dumpty’, why on a wall, why not a fence? They respond implicitly to the ‘paired contrasts . . . the rise of the first line opposed to the cadence and
10 C H A P T E R
anticlimax of the second; the galloping third line balanced by the braking to a halt of the heavily stressed last line’ (ibid.:1). It is a delicate pedagogical challenge to ensure that explicit knowledge enhances rather then detracts from enjoyment and appreciation. This is as true of poetry teaching as it is of other aspects of English.
