But the oral tradition persists in surprising places. You yourself have memorized some poems and didn’t even know it: jump rope rhymes! Do you remember? Here’s the one that first popped into ...

(Consider this modernized jump rope rhyme: Hannah Montana, dressed in yellow, went upstairs to kiss a fellow; made a mistake and kissed a snake. How many doctors did it take?) Pretend play is also ...

This sacred communal knowledge, along with other ephemera of youth—the blueprints for a cootie catcher, the words to a jump-rope rhyme, the rhythm of a clapping game—is central to the ...

The jump-rope rhyme “Miss Mary Mack” has given way to the rhymes of Christina Aguilera on MTV. And bicycles sit in garages, collecting dust. To target a decreasing level of activity among ...

She's written about sidewalk songs, jump-rope rhymes, hand-clap games, and the Black oral tradition of toasting. Mona Lisa's poetry grew from her youth in New Orleans' Seventh Ward, where music ...