Punctuation Celebration

by Elsa Knight Bruno, Jenny Whitehead (Illustrator)

Overview

Punctuation marks come alive in this clever picture book featuring fourteen playful poems. Periods stop sentences in a baker's shop, commas help a train slow down, quotation marks tell people what to do, and colons stubbornly introduce lists. This appealing primer is a surefire way to make punctuation both accessible and fun for kids.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781466821903
Publisher:	Henry Holt and Co. (BYR)
Publication date:	07/03/2012
Sold by:	Macmillan
Format:	eBook
Pages:	32
File size:	31 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.
Age Range:	6 - 9 Years

About the Author

Elsa Knight Bruno taught kindergarten for twenty-nine years. She has published fiction, nonfiction, and poetry in many children's magazines. Punctuation Celebration is her first picture book. She lives in Sylvania, Ohio.
Jenny Whitehead is the author-illustrator of Holiday Stew: A Kid's Portion of Holiday and Seasonal Poems and Lunch Box Mail and Other Poems. She lives in Kansas City, Missouri.

Editorial Reviews

Gr 1-4

Young readers will receive a better-than-average introduction to punctuation marks and their uses in this cheerfully illustrated collection of poems. Each selection presents an individual punctuation mark through rhyming verse: "Ellipsis points...three tiny dots.../Are perfect for those silent spots./Their use, dear reader, is permitted/When certain phrases are omitted." The featured punctuation marks are highlighted in red, and most of the offerings are followed by a rhyming example of the symbol in action. An overarching narrative about a punctuation field day loosely ties the poems together. Bruno's writing is clear and lively throughout, though most children will trip momentarily over her choice of the word "apropos." Bright collages of children of various ethnicities engaged in diverse activities complement the text. Jan Carr's Greedy Apostrophe (Holiday House, 2007), Lynne Truss's Eats, Shoots and Leaves (Putnam, 2006), and other works have explored individual punctuation marks. Bruno's comprehensive approach to the topic offers good value to smaller collections.-Jayne Damron, Farmington Community Library, MI

School Library Journal

A short poem introduces each punctuation mark and explains the rules of its usage, while an example appears on the facing page. The verses explain the rules of punctuation fairly clearly, but the language of the poems often comes across as stilted and forced. Further, although the concepts expressed are simple, the poems sometimes use advanced vocabulary in the service of rhyme and meter: "A question mark is apropos / When there are things you want to know." Thus, this effort makes a better refresher for older children than an initial lesson. Whitehead's gouache-and-cut-paper illustrations portray a multiethnic group of children reading, painting, eating and otherwise engaging in the activities referenced in the poems and examples. These dynamic illustrations add visual interest to the text without overcrowding the pages or distracting from the poems, which are printed in large, clear type, with everything in black except for the featured punctuation mark, which appears in red. For those looking for a quick punctuation review in a fresh style, this will do nicely. (Informational picture book/poetry. 5-10)

Kirkus Reviews

Here's a poetic way to learn punctuation—14 rhyming poems, with illustrated examples of hyphens, colons and other acrobatic punctuation at work. It's playfully instructive.” —USA Today

“Teachers presenting punctuation will be glad to have such a lighthearted interpretation of the topic to share with their classes.” —Booklist

“For those looking for a quick punctuation review in a fresh style, this will do nicely.” —Kirkus Reviews

“Bruno's writing is clear and lively throughout. . . . Bright collages of children of various ethnicities engaged in diverse activities complement the text. . . . Bruno's comprehensive approach to the topic offers good value to smaller collections.” —School Library Journal

From the Publisher