Rice Pudding

A beloved poem in our household. From Poems Ancient and Modern:

Children naturally find this kind of thing very funny. Sometimes it’s only children who find this kind of thing very funny. But what impels children to listen over and over and over to poems from Milne’s 1924  When We Were Very Young is the same thing that makes even sensible grownups consent to read them aloud. These poems do far more than simply push that button of the child’s desire to delight in getting one over on the adults.

In “Disobedience,” for example, the precise Latin hexameters give the tale of James and his mother its irresistible bounce, even while they are an echo of something more elevated. That frisson of dissonance extends the joke. In today’s Poem of the Day, in which the adult speaker can’t figure out why Mary Jane is kicking and screaming, the humor is similarly twofold and embedded in its form. (Read more.)