I have always loved playing around with words. Jokes, puzzles. rifles, word games are all right up my alley. I was the fastest word searcher in grade 6. My earliest word memory is around age 3 or 4. My Papa used to call people “jackass” all the time so I started to do so, too. My mom finally pulled me inside and told me I had to stop.. I vaguely remember asking her why I couldn’t use it if Papa used it. I recall that she said it wasn’t a really bad word, but it wasn’t a nice word. Funny the lessons you remember from childhood.
If, like me you enjoy playing with language, check this out:
Written by Michael Escoffier and illustrated by Kris Di Giacomo, Take Away the A is a playful romp through the alphabet.On each page we encounter a word, which becomes a different woe when a letter is removed.
I can imagine classrooms where kids are reading and discover more words where this can happen, then making their own version.
Oliver Jeffers is in the wordplay game right now, too.
“If words make up stories, and letters make up words, then stories are made of letters. In this menagerie we have stories, made of words, made for all the letters.”
And so begins a book of 26 short stories, each built around a letter. The book is 112 pages a long and a little dark in places, but still delightful.
Budding writers might be interested in Any Questions? by Marie Louise Gay.
Many children want to know where stories come from and how a book is made. Marie-Louise Gay’s new picture book provides them with some delightfully inspiring answers in a fictional encounter between an author and some very curious children, who collaborate on writing and illustrating a story.
Enjoy!
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