Word Play

Recently, I read two wonderful books on word play: David Lubar's Punished and The Cat's Pajamas by Wallace Edwards

 

 

 

Book Cover From: http://www.amazon.com/Punished-Darby-Creek-Exceptional-Titles/dp/product-description/1581960638/ref=dp_proddesc_0?ie=UTF8&n=283155&s=books&qid=1302799156&sr=8-1

From the Inside Flap

Logan isn’t grounded. But he is being punished—-by a weird old guy in the reference section who seems to have a little more magic than most librarians. Now Logan’s in big trouble with his parents, his teachers, and even his best friend, Benedict! Why? Because he’s out of control, spouting puns left and right, getting on everybody’s last nerve. 

To end this vocabulary voodoo, Logan must complete three quests in record time, finding some of the wackiest word combos known to English: oxymorons, anagrams, and palindromes. Don’t know what they are? Look them up! But be careful of strange librarians with dusty books or you, too, may be . . .
Punished! 

This book was recommended to me by Mrs. Klock's 5th grade class here at Chinook Trail Elementary.  I just love it when my students recommend books for me to read.

This is great book to teach students about word plays.  It is an excellent read-a-loud that can be followed up with activities allowing the students to create their own puns, anagrams, oxymorons, and palindromes.  WOW! What a fun lesson.

Teachers will enjoy the teachable moments and students will enjoy the humor.

Recommended for Grades 3 and up (though it might work well as a read-aloud to 2nd graders. They will find the word play funny, even if they don't quite understand it all.)

Mrs. Archer's Rating:  5 of 5

Book Cover from Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Cats-Pajamas-Wallace-Edwards/dp/product-description/1554533082/ref=dp_proddesc_0?ie=UTF8&n=283155&s=books

Amazon Product Description

From the acclaimed Wallace Edwards comes his second collection of idioms, a companion to the award-winning Monkey Business. The Cat's Pajamas depicts 26 idioms, bringing new meaning to familiar sayings and tickling your funny bone with a surreal illustration on each page. To ensure you get the hang of it, each expression is used in a sentence and explained at the back of the book. And if you look closely you'll discover a cat hidden in every painting; some cats are a piece of cake to find, others may require you to use your noodle. A gorgeously illustrated eye-spy book and a unique introduction to idioms, this book is truly the cat's meow. 

I read about The Cat's Pajamas on another blog and thought it would be a good book to share with Chinook 5th Graders.  The students loved the pictures, and surprisingly knew several of the idioms.  The next time I have an opportunity to share this book with 5th graders I hope to have enough time to allow them to create and illustrate their own list of idioms.  They are rather creative bunch. I bet they would come up with some great ones. A good lesson plan to be used with this book can be found here.

Recommended for Grade 4 and up.

Mrs. Archer's rating 5 of 5!