One Fish Two Fish Literary Devices

One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish

Theodor Seuss Geisel, better known as Dr. Seuss, is the author of my favorite childhood book, Oh the Places You'll Go along with many other children's poems. Dr. Seuss is easily one of the most well-known children's authors having sold over 100 million books (Kantrowitz). From personification to imagery to rhyming, Seuss knows just what it takes to make a great poem. Dr. Seuss uses literary devices such as rhyme, repetition, onomatopoeia, tone and personification throughout his book, One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish.

Along with many other children's poets, Dr. Seuss uses rhyme in his stories. Rhyming is a good way to engage children and keep their attention as well as help them learn new vocabulary. Seuss' work, One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish Blue Fish is riddled with rhyming words such as star and car, blue and new, sad and glad, the list goes on. Not only do children find the rhymes to be fun, they present a great opportunity for children to learn to read. Teachers recommend Dr. Seuss for first time

Most of the time repetition is used to add emphasis, however, the kind of repetition seen in One Fish, Two Fish is mostly for drama or entertainment. Dr. Seuss writes, "One fish / Two fish / Red fish / Blue fish. / Black fish / Blue fish / Old fish / New fish" (Seuss). As you can see, fish is the repetitive word here and it appears on the end of every line. This is known as epistrophe. (Jobe and Stevens). Isocolon is another form of repetition found in this book. Isocolon can be described as, "repetition of the same grammatical structure in two or more phrases or clauses" (Jobe and Stevens). A prime example of isocolon as seen in One Fish, Two Fish is, "This one has a little star / This one has a little car" (Seuss). Almost the whole line is repeated except for the last word which makes these two lines