Rhymes & Reasons is a smart, up-to-date, all-in-one guide to phonological awareness-what it is, what it isn't, and the best practices for teaching it.

In that Rhymes and Reasons are songs, not poems, I’ve left them in the accepted patterns necessary to set them to music. There may be some repetition but rare is the song sang in its entirety without repeating verses or choruses especially, what is now considered the chorus. The earlier songs were primarily AABA or ABAC patterns which were the norm back then. As patterns evolved into the more contemporary verse-chorus mode, I’d suspect that happened because repetition of the chorus allows for more rousing concert finales in which audience might be tempted to sing along.

Seventy-three classic nursery rhymes and the "reasons" behind them.

Is there too much violence in hip-hop music? What’s the difference between Kimberly Jones and the artist Lil' Kim? Is hip-hop culture a "black" thing? Is it okay for N.W.A. to call themselves niggaz and for Dave Chappelle to call everybody bitches? These witty, provocative essays ponder these and other thorny questions, linking the searing cultural issues implicit — and often explicit — in hip-hop to the weighty matters examined by the great philosophers of the past. The book shows that rap classics by Lauryn Hill, OutKast, and the Notorious B.I.G. can help uncover the meanings of love articulated in Plato's Symposium; that Rakim, 2Pac, and Nas can shed light on the conception of God's essence expressed in St. Thomas Aquinas's Summa Theologica; and explores the connection between Run-D.M.C., Snoop Dogg, and Hegel. Hip-Hop and Philosophy proves that rhyme and reason, far from being incompatible, can be mixed and mastered to contemplate life's most profound mysteries.

Poet John Hollander surveys the schemes, patterns, and forms of English verse in this classic text, illustrating each variation with an original and witty self-descriptive example. In new essays for this fourth edition, J. D. McClatchy and Richard Wilbur each offer a personal take on why the book has played such an important role in the education of young poets and student scholars. “How lucky the young poet who discovers this wisest and most lighthearted of manuals.”—James Merrill “Marvelously comprehensive, clarifying and useful, and a delight to read.”—John Reardon, Los Angeles Times Book Review “A virtuoso performance and a mandatory text for poetry readers and practioners alike.”—ALA Booklist

Rhymes and Reasons is a collection of counterpointed prose reflections and poems by New Zealand author Yvonne Dinkelbach. Wide ranging in its subject matter and locality, Dinkelbach's work is thought-provoking and always accessible.