RHYME + FOOD = A DELICIOUS PICTURE BOOK COMBINATION

Do you like to write in rhyme? Are you also a foodie? If you answered "Yes" to both, why not try writing a rhyming or lyrical picture book with a food theme? In today's Mentor Text Referrals, I look at three recent books with food themes -- two in metered rhyme and one lyrical text.

Plenty of Pancakes reunites the team of Carrie Finison (author) and Brianne Farley (illustrator) and is published bby G. P. Putnam's Sons, 2026. It is a companion book to Dozens of Doughnuts, published in 2020 and featured in the House Calls post "Two Picture Books that Almost Rhymed."

This book builds upon elements and techniques that Carrie Finison employed in her earlier book:

• a cooking theme and returning cast of characters
• a bouncy rhythm (primarily anapest -- da-da-DUM -- with some variation at the head of the lines), as well as a refrain
• building tension based on not having enough food and a satisfying ending

​In this spread, Finison introduces a refrain that includes a predictive rhyme that doesn't materialize:

Five perfect pancakes, hot from the pan.
Tender and crispy, and all for--
"Who's there?"

Readers will expect "pan" to rhyme with "LouAnn," the main character from Dozens of Doughnuts who is re-introduced in the opening of this book. The non-rhyme here adds an element of mystery to Plenty of Pancakes.

​The spread below, which happens just before the climax of the book, contains lots of great poetic and story devices:

• an example of the "Rule of Three" with three mini-scenes of friends helping
• alliteration -- the P sounds in pitch/pour and the CH sounds in Chip/Chomp
• repetition in the Woodrow stanza ("He looks low. He looks high.")
• interesting rhyme pairs (batter/platter and twenty/plenty)

Next up?

Pie-Rats! by Lisa Frenkel Riddiough and David Mottram was published by Viking in 2024. This story is a hat trick of rhyme, food, and PIRATES! I love that the opening spread features the rhyming pair doubloons/spoons. The word choices in this book are fantastic! The meter is quicker here, what the Rhyme Doctors would call a tail-less trochee, which drops the last unstressed syllable (DUM-da-DUM-da-DUM-da-DUM).

As the pie-rats set out in search of yummy pie, the author uses a refrain that changes slightly from scene to scene and invites reader participation:

From the ____________, hear them cry:
PIE, PIE, PIE, PIE!
(the blank spot includes pirate-y word choices like 
​poop deck, ratlines, lookout)

Alas, when the pie-rats reach the pie-filled island, they discover scallywags have eaten all the pie! ARRGH! Whats a pie-rat to do?

Poetic devices to note in this spread are the F alliteration of frosted/fluff and the S alliteration of sprinkle/sniff, as well as the predictive rhyme, using an ellipsis to encourage the page turn. Have you guessed what the pie-rats will find?

​Book #3 is a lyrical picture book:

Bread Is Love, by Pooja Makhijani and Lavanya Naidu and published by Roaring Brook Press this year (2026), contains a story about a mother and children baking bread, as well as a recipe and instructions in three pages of back matter.
​
What makes a story lyrical? Techniques like the use of poetic devices, precise word choices, and shorter sentence structure.

​Rich word choices (gloopy, bubbles, oozes) and onomatopoeia (glug-glug):

Repetition and the variable font size of the word GROW. The metaphor in the staement "Bread is patience." (And in the title, too!)

Alliteration. Look the many words that begin with Bs and Cs!

Are you hungry now to try and write a rhyming picture book about food? Harness your creativity and start one cooking!

​~ Patricia Toht