Punctuation Celebration

by Elsa Knight Bruno, Jenny Whitehead (Illustrator)

Overview

Can learning about punctuation really be fun? You bet—in Elsa Knight Bruno's Punctuation Celebration, featuring illlustrations by Jenny Whitehead

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:	9781250003355
Publisher:	Square Fish
Publication date:	07/03/2012
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	32
Product dimensions:	8.30(w) x 10.80(h) x 0.40(d)
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 Lunch Box Mail and other poems, which was named a CBC Children's Choice and a Bank Street College of Education Best Book. Jenny lives with her husband and two daughters in Kansas City, Missouri.

Editorial 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

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