Max's Words (Max's Words, 1) - Hardcover

Banks, Kate

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0374399492 ISBN 13: 9780374399498

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR), 2006

Synopsis

Max's brothers have grand collections that everyone makes a big fuss over. Benjamin collects stamps and Karl collects coins, and neither one will share with their little brother. So Max decides to start a collection of his own. He's going to collect words. He starts with small words that he cuts out of newspapers and magazines, but soon his collection has spilled out into the hall. All the while, his brothers are watching. Benjamin brags that he has one thousand stamps. Karl is just a few coins short of five hundred. But a thousand stamps is really just a bunch of stamps, and a lot of coins is only a heap of money. A pile of words, however, can make a story.

Bright, bold pictures incorporating clever wordplay accompany this highly original tale about a younger brother's ingenuity. This title has Common Core connections.

Max's Words is a 2007 Bank Street - Best Children's Book of the Year.

About this title

About the Author:

In addition to Max's Words, Kate Banks and Boris Kulikov have collaborated on The Eraserheads and the sequel to Max's Words, Max's Dragon. Ms. Banks has written many other books for young readers, including And If the Moon Could Talk, winner of the Boston Globe–Horn Book Award, and The Night Worker, winner of the Charlotte Zolotow Award. She lives in the South of France. Mr. Kulikov has illustrated a number of books for children and lives in Brooklyn, New York.

From School Library Journal:

Starred Review. PreSchool-Grade 2–Maxs two older brothers are serious collectors: Benjamin saves stamps and Karl keeps coins. The youngest boy decides to accumulate words. He carefully selects them from newspapers and magazines, cutting out and sorting them by category: colors, foods, small ones, big ones. He copies entries from the dictionary onto pieces of paper and adds them to his mounting collection. It doesnt matter if coins or stamps are moved around, but words can be arranged and rearranged to create stories. Even though his siblings wont share pieces of their collections, Max gives away words and the three boys devise a short story together. Imaginative, softly colored illustrations reveal the gathered words scattered all over the pages. They are fine examples of concrete poetry: HUNGRY has a chunk bitten out of it; ALLIGATOR has teeth and an eye peering from the R; BASEBALL is printed in the shape of a bat. The text is set in a variety of styles and sometimes curves around the piles of Maxs collection. This tale pays homage to the written word and may get children thinking about cutting and pasting their own stories or creating concrete poetry.–Maryann H. Owen, Racine Public Library, WI
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About this edition

• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR)
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 0374399492
• ISBN 13: 9780374399498
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 32
• Illustrator: Kulikov Boris