The Girl's Like Spaghetti: Why, You Can't Manage without Apostrophes! - Hardcover

Truss, Lynne

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0399247068 ISBN 13: 9780399247064

Publisher: G.P. Putnam's Sons Books for Young Readers, 2007

Synopsis

A comanion to the best-seller Eats, Shoots & Leaves, this is punctuation play at its finest!

Just as the use of commas was hilariously demystified in Eats, Shoots & Leaves: Why, Commas Really Do Make a Difference!, now Lynne Truss and Bonnie Timmons put their talents together to do the same for apostrophes. Everyone needs to know where to put an apostrophe to make a word plural or possessive (Are those sticky things your brother's or your brothers?) and leaving one out of a contraction can give someone the completely wrong impression (Were here to help you).

Full of silly scenes that show how apostrophes make a difference, too, this is another picture book that will elicit bales of laughter and better punctuation from all who read it.

About this title

About the Author

Lynne Truss is a writer and journalist who started out as a literary editor with a blue pencil and then got sidetracked. The author of three novels and numerous radio comedy dramas, she spent six years as the television critic of The Times of London, followed by four (rather peculiar) years as a sports columnist for the same newspaper. She won Columnist of the Year for her work for Women’s Journal. Lynne Truss also hosted Cutting a Dash, a popular BBC Radio 4 series about punctuation. She now reviews books for the Sunday Times of London and is a familiar voice on BBC Radio 4. She lives in Brighton, England.
BONNIE TIMMONS is best known for inspiring and creating images for the television show Caroline in the City and illustrating numerous national ad campaigns.

From Booklist

Bringing her proper-punctuation campaign to children for the second time, Truss follows up her best-selling 2006 picture book, Eats, Shoots, and Leaves: Why, Commas Really Do Matter! (which shares its title with Truss' bestseller for adults) with this companion about apostrophes. Mishaps related to the flying comma (fancifully envisioned as a Good Punctuation Fairy . . . flitting above a page of words) are set forth in paired statements, with Timmons' lighthearted cartoons driving home the shift in meaning precipitated by missing or misplaced apostrophes. The strain of coming up with clever, illustration-friendly examples occasionally shows, but many of the 13 scenarios successfully find the sweet spot between kid-pleasing goofiness and perfect clarity of purpose: with one scenario's play on the two meanings of behind, one referring to a horse's rear end, kids won't soon forget the crucial distinction between its and it's. Endnotes provide brief technical explanations. Hide your red pens: if Truss and Timmons keep this up, the grammar police may have its youngest recruits yet. Mattson, Jennifer

About this edition

• Publisher: G.P. Putnam's Sons Books for Young Readers
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 0399247068
• ISBN 13: 9780399247064
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 32
• Illustrator: Timmons Bonnie