Prompt 2

.Richard Wilbur and Billy Collins both wrote poems about children. Both of them had similarities in their poems but they also had their differences. Each author uses literary devices to make their point.

Richard Wilbur makes the child in his poem a scared little kid. His story is one about a kid who is afraid of an owl. The child is told that the owl is saying, "Who cooks for you". This makes the kid better for he is no longer afraid. His parents had solved the problem and helped the scared kid go to sleep.

Billy Collins writes a similar but different story from A Barred Owl. His story is about a history teacher who tells kids lies because he does not think that the kids can take the truth. The child in Richard Wilbur's is an innocent child but this is not so in Collins' story. At the end the children bully other kids despite the happy stories the teacher tells them.

There is a strong connection between these two books as well. They are both about kids and how we lie to them. In Wilbur's story we lie to them to soothe their fears. In Collins' story we lie to them so that they do not hear such wretched stories as The War of The Roses.

All in all, these two stories are two different stories but are very much alike. Both tell kids lies for what we think is a good reason. In Wilbur's story the lie does some good, but in Collin's story the lies do the kids no good at all.