To find this wrong in a young child's book - particularly in a Bookstart book?

[PrettyCandles]

'bath' rhymed with 'laugh'.

[fingernails on blackboard icon]

PMSL Thomcat- I was reading this thinking I have an 8 year old whose clearest 'words' are 'dee dai' for 'this way'..... I susp[ect your thoughts were much the same

DS1 is the one of my 3 who really likes rhyming books His favourite are:

Hand hand Fingers thumb (about monkeys banging on drums, but have lost it and can't remember it)

and
Maurice the Hippo:

Flutter by butterfly Maurice is a little shy
double bubble shampoo shake maurice goes and blows a lake
undercover hippo spy, starfish twinkle in his eye
maurice tries a wiggly wig, prickly tickle thingumajig
dip in maurice topsy turvey loop the loop with curly curvy
snug up woollies hippos too some for me and some for you
sticky pudding toffee flood hippo bathtime gobble glug
tippi tiptoe midnight house hippo and a hoppy mouse
smiley piggy potamus what else has he gottamus
pom pom custard cake to say hippo birthday hip hooray.

(I think the fact I know that off by heart tell you how much he likes that). I was going to write to the authors to tell them how much he loves it!

th/f - bah.

My late kind-of grandad used to say "plaRstic". I'm sure he would daRsh around town too!

I'm with snowleopard. There are so many very well-written and beautifully illustrated childrens books out there, why not use them? It should be goodbookstart, not crapbookstart. Having said that, with baby books it's all in the design and graphics isn't it.

OK Fluffy I concede. i could start on a treatise about why it's a crap rhyme and the Ogden Nash examples aren't - but I haven't got time and you're right ultimately it is a matter of opinion. Opinion backed up by common sense, instict and what feels good, as well as by literary understanding though. So I think you're being a bit disingenuous - you know you know when you're reading your child a rhyming book and it just flows and bounces and works, and when it doesn't. You can tell when they've departed from a strict rhyme, if it's creative and clever and funny, or if it's because they're not very good at it. You don't need a degree in Eng Lit and a career in publishing and writing to know that - any reader can feel it. And it's because of that that I think children should get quality books - because they can sense it, even without knowing it.

But I'm not sure I can be arrssed any more.

I do wonder whether there is a slight snobbery in this as well. My private school education has drummed into me that pronouncing 'th' as 'f' is only for the hoi polloi, and not the upper class elect. As is calling the letter H 'haitch' - shall I start another kick-off about that ?

BTW Snowleopard I agree with you 100%.

Well, Shakespear wrote:

Disdains the tillage of thy husbandry?
Or who is he so fond will be the tomb
Of his self-love, to stop posterity?

Philip Larkin:
Or, after dark, will dubious women come
To make their children touch a particular stone;
Pick simples for a cancer; or on some
Advised night see walking a dead one?
Power of some sort or other will go on
In games, in riddles, seemingly at random;
But superstition, like belief, must die,
And what remains when disbelief has gone?
Grass, weedy pavement, brambles, buttress, sky
And:
Move forward, run my hand around the font.
From where I stand, the roof looks almost new-
Cleaned or restored? Someone would know: I don't.

And Wilfred Own deliberately used near-rhymes:

They will be swift with swiftness of the tigress,
None will break ranks, though nations trek from progress.
Courage was mine, and I had mystery;
Wisdom was mine, and I had mastery;
To miss the march of this retreating world
Into vain citadels that are not walled.
Then, when much blood had clogged their chariot-wheels
I would go up and wash them from sweet wells,
Even with truths that lie too deep for taint.
I would have poured my spirit without stint
But not through wounds; not on the cess of war.
Foreheads of men have bled where no wounds were.

Snowleopard I take your point. But I haven't seen the book and the whole poem to know whether bath/laugh is really crap or not. I guess I'm arguing that in itself bath/laugh isn't a crap rhyme, just a half-rhyme. In the context of the book in question, however, it may be. I'm mainly taking issue with people who don't seem to get that half-rhymes or assonance in general are acceptable.

So can anyone find a better word to rhyme with bath (posh southern version)?

And ffs it's a nice, jolly, colourful baby book, and the OP got it free, and should be blooming grateful, surely. Give it away if you don't like it. It is clearly far too young for any child seriously learning to read.

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaargh! ShakespearE.

Mrs Marvel, Darth (as in Vader) or Barth (as in Karl) both work...not sure how appropriate they are for children's books though...

YABU

Queen's English m'dear!
We all speak it in the South you know!

I have the opposite problem when I am confronted with bath rhymed with gas.
It just seems wrong, wrong, wrong.

I have to brace myself when reading 'The big red bath' (Hope you know it). Bath is a northern one in this great book and frankly, I feel like I've let myself down if I get the wrong sort of bath!!!

No need to start getting Chaucerian Aloha.

Path. Aftermath. Lath.

I could only think of aftermath, but that would only work with bath in a cillit bang context...

But they do rhyme... I'm from the south west of England and I say a kind of mix between the two (barth and bath so it comes out baaaath). The same happens with laugh (laaaaf).

The rhyme does work; it has assonance.

Dont forget Yeats aloha. he seemed to send half his time rhyming 'wind' (as in strong breeze) with 'kind' or some other such.

Haven't read the book but really don't think this snippet alone makes it a bad book. Mummymagic sums it up well for me.

From my teaching days when teaching children to write poetry we've always been encouraged not to get them worry too much about rhyme, it's not the be all and end all with a piece of writing. There is no law in literature saying that words have to rhyme.

Enjoying the piece as a whole is far more important. There are some lovely kids books which include non perfect rhyme and play with language beautifully eg Pass the Jam Jim - Cut the cake,Kate.

Kids literature would be a very boring place if only books that rhymed perfectly were deemed to be acceptable.

Snow Leopard schools like kids to read real books for exactly that reason. A lot of scheme books include poorly written books with rigid rhyme which don't encourage kids to play with language and put them off creative writing.

hearth (at least with a kiwi accent)

Have sneaked back to see if you're all still here. You are! Wow. Thanks Aloha for the quick burst of REAL stuff! , takes me back to the days when I had time to read all by myself. For what it's worth, I still cannot get hung up on the words of Peepo Baby, whether they ryhme or not - there are plenty more books and plenty more time to instill a love of words. Do not think I have tainted DS (time will tell). From when he was still only a couple of days old he was exposed to all sorts of books, I would show him picture books - or read stuff like TS Eliot to him - some WONDERFUL rhythmns in Cats - and everything else in between. Have not introduced Shakespeare yet. Wilfred Owen takes me back to being earnest at 14. Sigh.

I absolutely agree, as I said earlier, when it's done with artistry and for a reason, half-rhyming can be great.

Though of course "Shakespeare never has six lines together without a fault" as Dr Johnson remarked. Shakespeare wrote very fast and his work is full of small errors, not to mention the fact that the original printers changed what he wrote to make the lines fit or because they didn't have the right bits of type, so not a great example.

Also since I'm at the lectern, bath/laugh is not a half-rhyme. In a half-rhyme, the final consonants - and often the initial consonants - are the same, but the vowel sound is slightly different, eg "years/yours" or "spoiled/spilled" (from Wilfred Owen).

In assonance, the vowel sound is the same - as in "shake and quail" (from Shakespeare) but the consonats don't have to be.

In a full rhyme, the vowel sound and the final consonant are the same - as in cat/mat.

"Bath/laugh" has both a different final consonant, and, in most accents, a slightly different vowel sound. In all my professional wisdom and experience, I therefore pronounce it to be...

a crap rhyme.

Well, DS loves Peepo Baby and it was one of his favourite books and really got him into reading and books in general. So who gives a toss whether 'bath' rhymes with 'laugh' if the book is clearly doing its job and helping kids to love reading?

"Assonance means getting the rhyme wrong" (Educating Rita)