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 ...

Essays, photographs and snazzy graphics combine in Double Dutch: A Celebration of Jump Rope, Rhyme, and Sisterhood by Veronica Chambers. The volume chronicles the history of the sport and profiles ...

New Jump Rope Rhymes by Rebecca Kai Dotlich, illus. by Melanie Hall, each of which is rhythmically suited to the schoolyard. ""Jumping Spell,"" for instance, opens the collection: ""Candelabra ...

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 ...