Claudia Lewis was interested in sensitizing children to the qualities of language. She focused on images that children use naturally in their everyday speech, and built upon these as precursors to poetry. “Deep as a Giant” first appeared in Childhood Education in March, 1938.

Deep as a Giant
Adapted from an article by Claudia Lewis

Elizabeth, five years old, looked at the large boat she had built of boxes and blocks and said, “The water around my boat is deep as a giant.” When we went into our classroom, I told the whole group what Elizabeth had said and suggested that they all think of some other deep things. I said, “What is the deepest thing in the world? Deep as...?”

“Deep as sand in the ocean.”

“Deep as dirt under the ground.”

“Deep as from the sky down.”

These and many more the children shouted out with zest and delight. And so began an experiment for me and a game for the children, a game of playing in this way with our concepts, our speech, for the fun of it.

As Easy As...

One day I stopped a child who had just said, “It’s as easy as pumpkin pie!” and asked him and the others to think of what was really easy. The easiest things in the world that came tumbling from their mouths ranged from “Easy as drinking water,” and “Easy as wind blows paper all around the sky,” to “Easy as when you wash your face in the morning, your cheeks get red.”

As Easy As...

The next step was to concentrate on the difficult things. First came:

“Hard as catching a train when you come up late and it’s just leaving.”

“Hard as to break your hand.”

“Hard as to cut your hair like a barber.”

Then these four lines followed inevitably, one upon the other:

“Hard as to hear when you’re deaf.”

“Hard as to see when you’re blind.”

“Hard as to talk when you’re mute.”

“Hard as to walk when you have a broken leg.”

The Quiet Story

We worked through what was fast and what was slow and what was flat, but what seemed to please us all the most was the Quiet Story. The children returned to this again and again, spontaneously offering more suggestions from day to day.

“Quiet as you close your eyes.”

“Quiet as thermometer goes up.”

“Quiet as you cut cotton.”

“Quiet as a splinter comes in.”

Rhythms and Sounds

Another angle of this language game of our concerned the rhythm and sound of words. It seems natural for children to coin their own words, especially words representing sounds. To give the children opportunities for using this talent has been part of the experiment. They seem to coin words when they are looking, listening, touching, or when they are vividly remembering sights and sounds.

One windy day we wrote a windy story. It was a relief and a joy to get away from an interminable series of “The wind blows this,” and “The wind blows that,” to

“Sometimes the wind goes bumbling over like a wave.”

“The wind blows papers fruffle, fruffle, fruffle.”

With rhythms and sounds we could tell stories with reflections of the noises and motions of their subjects. We could get the ponderous swing of a steam shovel in our speech. We could make a word picture with the quick little rhythms of our hungry, nibbling pet mice.

To conclude, perhaps I could do not much better than to quote Ann’s reply when I asked her how we might bring our train story to an end. Said she abruptly, “Caboose! It’s ended.”

About the Author
Claudia Lewis was a research associate, student advisor, and teacher of language arts, children’s literature, and writing for children at Bank Street College. Among the works she authored are Children of the Cumberland, Writing for Young Children, and Poems of Earth and Space. For several summers, she returned to her native Oregon to teach a graduate course, “Creative Writing in the Elementary School.” Bank Street honored her long service as a member of the Children’s Book Committee by naming the award for the best poetry book of the year after her.