RICKY, THE ROCK THAT JUST COULDN'T RHYME
Ricky, a rock wrapped in vines who wears a rainbow feather on his head, attends a school populated exclusively by other irregularly shaped gray stones that come in an intriguing range of sizes. Ricky loves school—until his reading and writing teacher introduces rhyming. She does this by calling up several imaginary scenarios—“oodles of poodles and noodles,” a bear eating an eclair—which confuse Ricky and leave the fundamental concept fuzzy. Ricky’s friend Tess follows him as they roll home through farmland, trying to coax her pal into experimenting with verse—which he does, albeit accidentally: “Can you think of a word that would rhyme with that Cow?” / “I don’t want to right now.” After several explosions of accidental rhyme, Ricky figures out that he can, in fact, compose verse (“Ricky then realized not trying was wrong— / He had no idea he could rhyme all along!”). He presents a tale of his own journey to his teacher the following day (“I’ve finished my story, and it’s really sublime, / Called ‘Ricky, the Rock That Just Couldn’t Rhyme’ ”). Young readers will find Mr. Jay’s rhythmic pattern of couplets comforting, and the narrative neatly gives beginning students of rhyme plenty of examples to work with. An ending stanza that cuts off without resolving its rhyme invites readers to finish the piece. Wozniak’s sharp-lined pictures are mostly black and white, except for gray rocks, Ricky’s feather, and all rhyming items in the characters’ surroundings—for example, the duck on a truck that is stuck in the muck.
