Book Speak!

Book Speak!

Citation:

Salas, Laurie Purdie. Book Speak! New York : Clarion Books, 2011. ISBN: 978-0547223001

Plot Summary: 

                Book Speak! is a nonfiction book written in verse about the aspects of a book and their homes. Laurie Purdie Salas writes poems to teach about the different aspects of books, for example she explains a character, the index, and a book plate to name a few. The pictures are abstract and colorful, and the reader will have a good time digesting the information with the illustrations. The illustrations re-enforce the words the poems are explaining which helps them remember if they have something visual to match the word with.

Critical Analysis:

                Book Speak! was written by Laurie Purdie Salas in 2010 using poems to explain different concepts relative to books. Each poem tells its own story while using rhyming, repetitiveness, and clarity that would make it an excellent way for teachers to incorporate book information into a poetry unit. The flowing verse allows for children to easily follow along and interpret what they are reading or hearing. The use of poems also shortens the book because you do not have to read it all the way through. Each poem has an ending and can be used with younger children with shorter attention spans.

Review

Publisher’s Weekly: ““Put down the controller./ Switch off the TV./ Abandon the mouse and/ just hang out with me.” From the outset, this collection of poems makes its message clear: books are where it’s at.”

School Library Journal: “Some of these 21 poems are written in rhyme and meter, while others are free verse. They vary in length from a few to several stanzas, and all are well crafted and clever, covering a variety of aspects of books and reading.”

Children’s Literature: “One of the delights of this collection is that it draws attention to the way nature can be said to be writing; in ways like the tracks on snow or a line of birds on a telephone wire.”

Connections:

·         Introduction to poetry unit for children third through fifth grade

·         The Poetry Friday Analogy by Laurie Purdie Salas

·         Forgive me, I meant to do it: False Apology Poems by Gail Carson Levine