Chester Van Chime Who Forgot How to Rhyme is a 2022 picture book written by Avery Monsen and illustrated by Abby Hanlon.
Chester Van Chime Who Forgot How to Rhyme is also a genuine joy.
The book’s premise is simple. When Chester Van Chime wakes up one day, he’s forgotten how to rhyme. He moves through the early part of his day, doing and narrating things that would naturally fall into rhyme.
Except they don’t. Rhymes that would be easy, even obvious, are somehow out of reach. Instead of saying, or even thinking, “easy” to rhyme with “queasy,” he says something else, something that not only doesn’t rhyme, it messes with the rhythm.
This continues as he goes on through the day: at school not only can Chester not rhyme, he messes up a class recitation of a nursery rhyme.
His friends set out to help him by drawing and sharing several easy rhymes, but Chester botches those too.
So they bring him more rhymes. He manages to actively avoid them, substituting longer and much more complicated words for simple rhymes, like “swingy sports stick” for “bat.”
Finally, on the way home, Chester has a breakthrough, and the rhymes explode back into his life.
And…that summary really doesn’t give a clear sense of the energy and power of this book, qualities that will prompt adults and kids to read it multiple times. First, there’s the near perfection of the missing rhymes: they fit so well that it seems impossible not to say them. I found myself frustrated with Chester, and wanting to help him, so imagine a little kid reading this.
Second, there are the overt and intentional rhymes, the ones Chester’s friends try to share with him. Those build on one another, and give kids something to anticipate. Since the illustrations show them, it also engages kids who don’t read yet. Even they will spot that the “tiny lion” is really a cat, and so on.
Third, Chester moves through a world that is overflowing with rhymes in the images. Page 1 is an otherwise white rhyming couplet that introduces the situation, and page 2 a wordless full-page image. Page 2 shows mice on dice, a slug on a rug, socks on blocks, and I’m not going to tell you how many more paired rhyming words. This makes each page into a puzzle, one so active there will be a lot of pointing.
I laughed. I clapped. I am joining (if there is one) the Avery Monsen fan club.
