Eats, Shoots & Leaves

Title: Eats, Shoots & Leaves: Why, Commas Really DO Make a Difference!

Author: Lynne Truss

Illustrator: Bonnie Timmons

Non-Fiction #5

Let’s eat Grandpa. Let’s eat, Grandpa. Proper grammar can save a person’s life!

I absolutely adored this book! Being somewhat of a grammar girl myself, I found this book to be particularly funny but also important and educational. Each page (or set of pages) introduces the same sentence with and without a comma, or set of commas, that are necessary to the overall meaning of the sentence. Children are sure to find themselves laughing along the way as some of the sentences’ meanings are changed entirely simply by adding one comma. The illustrations in the book are also wonderful because they help add to the meaning of the book greatly as well as add to the humor of the book. I found myself laughing at the pictures more than anything throughout reading the story.

My favorite part of the book is the back pages that explain why each sentence needs the comma and why it is wrong without it. Though the terminology may be confusing for younger students, a discussion could be based on the different meanings of the sentences. Additionally, the importance of using commas to make sure what you’re saying is what you mean could/should be emphasized. With older students, each sentence could be given to them without any punctuation and they could try to find out or predict where the comma goes before seeing the correct version of it. I think this book would be great to use in any 3^rd grade classroom or older and would be great reference to any student who is struggling with the use of commas. 

How Much Can a Bare Bear Bear

Title: How Much Can a Bare Bear Bear?: What are Homonyms and Homophones?

Author: Brian P. Cleary

Illustrator: Brian Gable
Non-Fiction #4

How Much Can a Bare Bear Bear is an adorable book about homonyms and homophones. Before the student can even read the book, the two words are defined on the first page of the book. This is good because it gives the student an understanding about the terms before delving into the book. Homonyms in the book include can, may, coast, toast, light, trunk, scale, lean, punch, jam, bowl, and roll. The context in which the words were used in was very clear and also quite funny. I loved the illustrations that went along with each page. Not only did they help illuminate meaning but they added to the story and educational value of the text greatly.

Homophones in the book include praise/pray/prey, their/they’re/there, bee/be, flea/flee, burro/burrow, horse/hoarse, ewe/you, fowl/foul, toad/towed, heir/air, whale/wail, male/mail, pair/pare/pear, bust/bused, Barry/bury/berry, band/banned, Mary/marry/merry, sea/see, ball/bawl, moose/mousse, creek/creak, bear/bare, would/wood, Sioux/sue, knew/gnu/new, grease/Greece, etc. Again, the context in which they were used was very clear and funny. The illustrations that were on each page helped the meaning of the text and were cute and funny to look at. I liked them a lot and think kids would like them too.

In the end, I love this book because of its versatility. So many lessons could be done using this book, it could be used for many grades, and the information is so important to know! I can’t tell you how many adults I run into that don’t know how to correctly use certain forms of words. Thus, this text is very educational and very useful. I would suggest having this book in any classroom. Even in the younger grades, only a few pages could be used at a time. Once the children had the meaning down of those homonyms or homophones you could move on to the next few pages and so forth. The educational opportunities this book presents are wonderful! I absolutely loved the clever usage of all of the words and the cute pictures that accompanied them.