Poodle Knows What? Student Book

Book 1 of the Poodle Series

Grammar is hard, and horrible, and miserable, and you have to know zillions of kinds of words, and you have to be a genius to get it all figured out. Right?

Poodle and Sidney would disagree with that. And What?. What?

Poodle is a chicken, and his best friend is a beagle named What?. And before you have a chance to think too hard about that, ZOOM!, in races Sidney, the fastest snail you ever did see. (She’s in training to be a verb.)

Between the three of them, they know quite a lot about grammar, and it turns out that all of those myths about grammar being awful and complicated and hard to do are simply untrue.

Grammar—when you have the right chicken, the right beagle, and the right snail—is easy! There are only eight kinds of words, and they are simple to learn. Just ask What?. He’ll tell you. What?

It’s true! What? and his friends will gladly share all of their secrets with any child who opens the pages of this introductory grammar book for young children. It begins…well, at the beginning, with the parts of speech—level one of MCT’s four-level sentence analysis. What better way to start?

Poodle Knows What? is a delightful story told in unmetered rhyme and overflowing with quirky and endearing images drawn by artist Christopher Tice and incorporating the art of Milton Kemnitz, whose work infuses many of the other books in the MCT curriculum. On page after page, Michael plays with words and with sounds—with what language can do. And the best part is that children get to hear Michael read it himself because every spread of two pages contains a QR code that links to audio of Michael narrating the text. If you think the story is fun, wait until you hear Michael tell it.

Young children will cherish this book for its wit, its humor, its beauty, its cleverness, and—oh yes—its valuable grammar instruction, which will provide them with a solid foundation of grammar knowledge that will benefit them for the rest of their lives. Even children who have advanced beyond the primary levels will find themselves enchanted by Sidney’s enthusiasm and by the deep friendship between Poodle and What?. What?

Grammar is not hard, nor horrible, nor miserable, and you don’t have to know zillions of kinds of words, and you don’t have to be a genius to get it all figured out. Poodle knows that. He knows What?. Exactly.