We seem to have had a glut of rhyming text submissions recently. Now normally I’d immediately advise that the author take the text out of rhyme and write the same story in prose. Organising foreign co-editions is an important part of publishing a picture book and, for obvious reasons, rhyming texts pose translation problems. However a few things have happened recently which have caused me to do a bit of a u-turn.

Firstly Julia Donaldson has been appointed the new Children’s Laureate. True she doesn’t write exclusively in rhyme but it is what she is known for. I should know. It’s always Donaldson’s name that is thrown in my face every time I reject a rhyming text. If got paid for every time I heard ‘but The Gruffalo is written in rhyme’ I’d be a rich woman indeed!

Secondly I organized for a number of Writers’ Advice Centre authors to give five minute pitches to Ben Cameron at the London Book Fair. Ben is publisher for Pavilion Children’s Books. A few weeks later I was at the Pavilion offices helping Ben go through his slush pile when he gave me the good news that, in his opinion, three of my authors showed promise. To my huge surprise one had pitched a rhyming text about a family taking its dog for a walk. When I queried this Ben admitted that, these days, he will consider rhyming texts. Not exclusively but he will, at least, give them the time of day. The fact is publishers are less fixated than they used to be on co-editions.

However although Donaldson has turned rhyming texts into a fashion statement it doesn’t necessarily mean that writing in rhyme is the right thing to do from a new writer’s perspective.

“Sometimes it isn’t the best way to tell the story,” says Donaldson. “In bad hands, rhyme can make a story interminable. But the reverse is that when it is done well you can write very concisely, you don’t have to describe everything.”

Writers’ Advice Centre editor, Rebecca Hill, agrees. “I’d say that authors shouldn’t write a text in rhyme as a gimmick, or to give it ‘fun factor’, or just because. Write in rhyme if the text demands it or will benefit from it (in terms of style, structure etc).”

Good advice. And Rebecca should know. Before she became an editor and successful writer in her own right, Rebecca worked for a packager churning out rhyming texts for picture books.

She continues, “Anyone who aspires to write in rhyme should make a hundred per cent certain they have their rhymes and scansion absolutely perfect. Kids have an uncanny natural ear for rhyme and scansion – half-rhymes and dodgy metre won’t fly.”

So all you poets out there, before you put pen to paper think long and hard and ask yourself if your text needs to be written in rhyme. If the answer is ‘yes’ then by all means send them in our direction for advice.