A little look at lyrical books

Today, please join me in exploring three lyrical picture books!

What exactly is a "lyrical" picture book? Merriam-Webster defines the word lyrical as "having an artistically beautiful or expressive quality suggestive of a song." A lyrical book does more than use beautiful words; those words, written in prose, read more like a poem. This lyrical quality is achieved by utilizing rhythm (meter), poetic devices, and imagery.

NELL PLANTS A TREE is written by Anne Wynter and illustrated by Daniel Miyares (© 2023, Balzer & Bray). In this book, the author and illustrator interweave the growth of a tree from a seed planted by Nell, with the growth of Nell's family.

The story begins with these lines:

Before a grip on a branch
and a fall to the ground
and a scrape
and a leap and a reach for the top,
before anyone finds out how high they can climb,
Nell picks up a seed.

Anne Wynter sets up a pattern here that will repeat in the story's six vignettes. The rhythm is strongly anapest meter (da da DUM da da DUM) in the "Before..." lines, before ending with a more terse line about the actions that Nell took earlier.

As a rhymer, I noted the repetition of the word "before," and the anaphora of "and a" in the second, third, and fourth lines. Alliteration is used with the B sound in the words before/branch and the H sound in how/high, as well as the assonance (repeated vowel sounds) of the long E vowel in leap/reach. [Click on the hot-linked words to read Eileen Meyer's "Poetry Prescriptions" posts on these topics.]

For me, one of the most interesting aspects of this book is how it plays with time. The "Before..." lines move the story of the family forward, while the "Nell..." closing lines of the vignettes look to the past. Very well done!

​Here is another 2-spread (4-pages) vignette from the book. What do you notice?

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I AM SMOKE is written by Henry Herz and illustrated by Mercè López (© 2021, Tilbury House Publishers). This book is written from the point-of-view of smoke. I like this description from the book's flap copy: "When smoke speaks, its messages swirl and shift like smoke itself -- playful, challenging, devious."

Henry Herz opens the book with these lines --

I am smoke.
I twirl in dark dance from every campfire.

which are mirrored at the end of the book --

...to fuel another campfire.
I twirl again in dark dance.
I am smoke.

The author and illustrator combine lyrical language and smoky colored illustrations with factual information. In the spread below, I noted the alliteration of the F sound in flickering/flames and the M sound in burning/branches. The line that follows this spread, "I am borne aloft in the heat's embrace/ soaring and spreading my wings," evokes the imagery of flying birds.

The author uses riddles in the text -- "I lack a mouth, but I can speak...I lack hands, but I can push out unwanted guests...I'm gentler than a feather, but I can cause harm..." -- that magnify the mysterious quality of smoke. The ability and cleverness of Herz and López to capture and personify this nebulous subject blew me away!

TIME IS A FLOWER is written and illustrated by Julie Morstad (© 2021, Tundra Books). In this book, the author uses the poetic device of metaphor to explain the idea of "time" in child-friendly ways.

Julie Morstad opens the book with these lines:

Time is the tick, tick, tick, tock
of the
clock
and
numbers and words
on a calendar.

But what else is time?

I love the T sound alliteration in the first line, the internal rhyme of tock/clock, and another alliteration of the C sound in clock/calendar.

The author then uses more than a dozen metaphors to describe time in ways that a child might grasp, including this spread:

I like how the pacing of reading these two pages changes. On the left page, the word "quick" leads you to speed up the reading of the next words. To use a musical term, the hard consonant sounds of C and P make the text feel staccato. On the right page, the instructive word is "slow"; the long O vowels and the soft S sounds feel smoothly legato. [Here's a overview about these musical terms.] If one key to a lyrical book is being "suggestive of a song," I'd say Julie Morstad has hit the mark!

If you are interested in writing lyrical picture books, studying mentor texts and learning about poetic devices will help you on your journey. Start with these three wonderful books, then ask you local librarian or bookstore owner to help you find more, or Google "lyrical picture books" to find appropriate lists.

Happy writing!

~ Patricia Toht