Have you heard  that rhyming couplets in picture books are about to be revealed in a prominent medical journal as a serious health hazard? That being, umm, true, it is time to take stock of this soon to be extinct genre. It is time for the Rhyming Couplet and Quatrain Epitaph Contest.
First of all, though, you may possibly wish to know more about the medical hazards posed by rhyming couplets and quatrains.  Here is what I can reveal at this time. This information is based entirely on what was leaked to me by a contributing scientist who has insisted on remaining nameless at present because “this is the most hazardous research I have ever been associated with. We simply didn’t use enough safeguards, and it is still unknown whether the cognitive deterioration exhibited by our entire team will prove to be reversible.” I’m sure you can understand her reticence. All right – so here is what we know so far.

1. Rhyming Couplets and Quatrains In Picture Books (RCQIPB) has been  directly correlated  o a neurological disorder in readers called the Bappity Syndrome (BS). BS is marked by the dissociation of words from meaning and context, not only during the reading of the book but for a prolonged period afterwards. Adult readers with a saturation point exposure to RCQIPB were 278% more likely to have automobile accidents resulting from confounding traffic signs, 317% likelier to purchase food they didn’t want to actually eat because it rhymed with something already in the shopping cart, and 9,178% likelier to hug inanimate objects like rugs and mugs.
2. RCQIPB has been firmly established as a form of malign hypnosis which makes its readers susceptible to the sort of latent behavioral triggers made famous in The Manchurian Candidate. RCQIPB therefore constitutes both a national and a global security crisis.
3. 53% of subjects given prolonged exposure to RCQIPB experienced catastrophic cognitive decline marked by the gradual subsuming of all verbal and written communications in a nonsensical sub language the researchers termed Ippity, which is marked by communication devoid of meaning in both structure or even purpose.
4. The findings regarding the effects of RCQIPB on children were found to be far, far more egregious but ultimately reversible if successfully exposed to Harriet the Spy.

These are, apparently, only some of the findings to be revealed in the prominent medical journal. If the article fails to appear that would certainly make this matter all the more poignant, as we would have to assume that these intrepid researchers had succumbed to the effect of BS, and were constitutionally unable to complete their paper.
In the meantime one feels that it is certainly time to write the epitaph for RCQIPB, something along the lines of .

Oh rhymes of which we must henceforth refrain
Think now of all the books of which you were the bane
Find peace and be just at your long overdue fate
Consider how even this rhyming epitaph does grate

And so forth. Post your entry below and be eligible for a sensational prize!