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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/44339
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/44339
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

I have been intending to create a book for toddlers with basic scientific notions in it. Most books for this target readership that I have seen present whatever content in the form of a story, quite often with fictional characters. I was intending instead to go for the dry science, and write it down as easy-to-remember rhymes.

The content is clearly not easy to digest, both for the toddlers, and possibly for the parents too. To be able to explain the meaning of scientific concepts would be a dream; in the least I'm hoping to provide a mnemonic reference for future use.

To this aim, poetry makes liberal use of metaphors, similes, and other artifices to convey its content, and make it memorable. I am afraid that in general this would detract from the precision of the scientific language.

Are there rhetorical figures that, while preserving a good amount of language precision, would make the content easier to remember? Should the mnemonics rather be attained from the structure of the poem, i.e. a sonnet instead of a longer ballad?

As a note, I was planning to use religious litanies as a reference, purging them of the arcane imagery, and copying their repetition patterns, for instance. On the other hand, perhaps, science can find a different, more suitable form.

Original score: 9