Penny and the Punctuation Beeby Moira Rose Donohue
illustrated by Jenny Law
Albert Whitman & Company, 2008
review copy compliments of the publisher
You might pass this book up if you're not careful. The illustrations don't look very sophisticated and you might think the book will be a preachy diatribe about using correct punctuation.
Give it a chance. You'll be pleasantly surprised.
Meet friends Penny the period who is on safety patrol (she's good at stopping), Connie the comma, and Quentin the question. The three sign up for the Punctuation Bee in Mr. Dash's room. Elsie, the bouncy enthusiastic cheerleader (an exclamation point) also signs up, and the three friends get busy practicing for the bee so they can beat Elsie. Each Punctuation Bee participant is given a word that he/she must use in a sentence that is correctly punctuated with his/her punctuation mark. The competition is close -- it's won on a technicality -- and you're going to have to read the book to find out who wins!
Read carefully so that you don't miss any of the puns: the hyphen that dashes by, the asterisk named Stella, and more.
Donohue is smart: she doesn't overdo the characterization of the marks by trying to be clever with them all. She focuses on the period, comma, question mark and exclamation point. That means her story doesn't get away from her (or from the reader). And the illustrations? They grow on you. Give this book a chance. I'm betting you wind up adding it to your collection.
Wow, I think you read my mind! I did take a quick look at this one and gave it a pass because of the title (seemed ho-hum) and illustrations (seemed indeed too young). So now I will definitely take another look. Thanks!
ReplyDeleteA friend sent me to this website because she saw this review of my book. Thank you so much for your kind comments and for taking a second look at the book. I am delighted to hear that you enjoyed it and I am especially pleased that you had fun with the word play that I tried to sprinkle throughout. I really enjoy these quirky punctuation personalities (Penny is my second book on the subject!) and I hope that comes through in my writing. This is a very nice blogspot and I shall be back to visit!
ReplyDeleteMaybe I'm biased because I know Moira -- but I think the simple, bright illustrations make it good for reading to a class. Quiet, detailed pictures can be hard to see if you're not the one closest to the teacher.
ReplyDeleteAnna, I totally agree about the pictures! Once I opened the book and got started, they seemed just right!
ReplyDeleteMoira, thanks for stopping by! I'll check out your other punctuation book!